Her stage debut

Lily's school had a sort of graduation this week. They don't call it a graduation, it's not conducted like a graduation, but for some kids it's the end of their time at the school. There was a slideshow and singing. It was so awesome. Lily was so excited to be a part of it, I was so excited to watch her.

It started with a slideshow. Pictures of the kids at school and on field trips.. set to music. The first song was Forever Young. I thought I was going to cry.

I couldn't believe it- I was horrified at myself. Being a mommy has done horrible, horrible things to me. I've become so overly-sensitive to issues regarding children- the younger they are, the worse it is. There have seen episodes of my favorites shows in which not-so-great things were happening to little kids and I was practically in tears thinking of my own kids.

And when that song came on it was just.. ohmaGodtinypeoplegrowingupsofast stop it stop it stopit! I concentrated very hard on the pictures and not at all on the music. In fact.. there were three songs in total.. and I have no idea what the second two were.

When the kids went up on stage to perform and sing.. I had almost the worst view of Lily I could possibly of had. She was in the back row, on the opposite side of the stage, mostly blocked by the boy in front of her. I should find out who the parents of the two kids in front of her are.. I have some excellent video footage of their children.

But, Lily did have a solo part in Old MacDonald Had a Farm (she sang about his horse) and she came up to the front of the stage. It was perfect because we make up silly lyrics to that song at home all the time. She did really well.

And then it was over before it began.

I can't wait til next year.

what we did

1. The flowers I've been buying myself- I'm also turning into potpourri after that.
2. Giant crane outside the window of Lily's latest dentist appointment. It must have been about as tall as she is.
3. Cucumbers in bloom
4. Love this Father's Day shirt. I should have bought it, but.. it would only get worn a few days a year.
5. The green (and purple) beans are growing like crazy..
6. Lunch at Ikea. Jason, Lily, and Noah had chocolate cake.. I had a salad. And then chocolate cake.

month of mondays

A month of Mondays is a good way to describe all the annoying, annoying shit that is happening to me this June. None of it so horribly awful on its own (although what happened with my car almost was)- and even all together it's not the end of the world, but when it's one after another, after another, after..

It is making me want to just lay down and quit. I really am just so over it- let's move on to July already can we?

First there was the start of the ants and the floor cleaning incident. Then, last Sunday my car..

I stopped at a red light. Sort of, but not like I thought I would. So I let my car roll forward a few more feet. And when I stopped that time.. the brake pedal went all the way to the floor and I stopped soooooo sllllooooowly. (It's a whole nother level of terror when you are suddenly driving a car without brakes and your child in the back.)

I made it over to a parking lot, going about 5 mph, and that was the end of that- my car was towed to the garage. It was partially repaired on Tuesday. Yes, partially- but still fully costly.

Since there is more repairing to still be done (the mechanic's exact words were "your brakes are SO rotted. SO rotted") I don't feel safe driving it (and the response when I specifically asked wasn't reassuring).

On Monday, I took Jason to work so I could have a car for Lily school purposes and to get my former Sunday errands done, but I only got one stop in.

And even that almost didn't happen. Right before I got out of the car- I picked up my bag and.. what? Liquid everywhere. All over my lap.. all over the seat. Apparently before I put Noah's juice in the bag, I hadn't screwed the cap on well enough. My pants were drenched in apple juice- looking quite a lot like I just hadn't made it to the bathroom in time.

So I tied my jacket around my waist and went into the store anyway. (Because I will not be deterred!) It covered up most of the wetness, but there was so much spilled juice that it had run down my legs as well- and there was nothing I could do to cover that. I just pretended it wasn't there.

My usually calm Noah, fussed and cried the entire trip. Once in the car.. I gave him what was left of the juice, but that only kept him calm for a few minutes. Then he screamed. Hysterically. Like an alligator was eating him. For the entire drive on the highway. Twenty minutes?

I kept handing things back to him.. his binky, my scarf, Lily's sunglasses. Music on. Music off. Singing, no singing. Clapping. Talking. Shushing. Twisting my arm around behind me and trying to rock his car seat. But nothing worked. I finally pulled over. Picked up everything he'd thrown and gave him back the empty juice bottle. Which bought me about 20 seconds? Before he fully realized it hadn't magically refilled itself. And then started screaming like a maniac again. It was so awesome.

No it was not.

The rest of the week was full of the same awesomeness.

My children are fully intent on sleeping in opposite shifts. The ceiling in the living room is leaking. The ants started to show up again over the weekend. Wait, did I mention that they are carpenter ants? I killed 20 of them on Monday- four by 7:30am and I knew it was going to be a bad day. One of them was nearly an inch long- and I was fully horrified. Which led to tons more cleaning.

Tuesday brought the news that my car didn't have an appointment until Friday (nearly 2 weeks without a car). Some "fun" at the bank.. to the extent that I thought I was going to punch someone. And then my hard drive died.

It started out like.. "oh hey, that's weird, look at my screen." And ended with one hard drive being removed and another having to be installed. I've gone through 2 hard drives in less than a year now. Jason wanted to know if I was taking my MacBook on roller coasters or trampolines. "Both," I told him.

Wednesday. (Ah, yes, that's today.) I planned to finally get to the grocery store. I took Lily to school and then went home to get Noah and Jason. About 10 minutes after I got home, Lily's school called. Apparently she was vomiting and had a fever. She had a little cough when I dropped her off, but I noticed one of her friends did as well this morning. Lily is always a little warm and when she coughs because she doesn't blow her nose enough.. well, it's gotta come out somewhere. But what was I going to do argue contexts with them?

So on the way to take Jason to work, I picked up Lily from school. "She's not complaining that she doesn't feel good, but.." was the first thing her teacher said to me. I smiled, collected my child, and walked out. Thankfully Lily didn't seem mad, just confused.

I asked Lily how she felt- "fine" she tells me. And then if she really threw-up or if she just spit up saliva/whatever because she was coughing/didn't blow her nose- she tells me it was the later. "Ya, I figured," I said and I rolled my eyes at no one in particular.

I am so excited for all the other awesomeness that the next eleven days are going to bring.

No I'm not.

(As I'm writing this I keep remembering other things that happened. I was staring at the ceiling trying to think, and then.. oh ya.. that big stain.. the ceiling is leaking again. I quit.)

update:

Just found an ant IN our fridge. So, that's awesome.. #nonoitsnot
— Laura (@teamtantrum) June 20, 2013

what we did

1. I started buying myself flowers. Cus, I mean.. it seemed like I should.
2. Baby feet. Enough said.
3. And more blue sky.
4. Sigh. There are so many days when, after I've made special order, on-the-fly lunches for two little people, that I just don't even want to bother with my own. So I eat a plate of vegetables and move on.
5. Window garden is thriving. Sort of unbelievably so. But, I've mentioned it a couple of times already so..
6. Peonies at dusk. What else can I really say about it? Pictures like this amuse me, because I feel like it's just a false representation of what my life is really like.
7. Ah.. the "waiting for the tow truck" photo. The start of the stupid, annoying, still on-going week.
8. I watched the Apple WWDC keynote on my MacBook. It was good- I thought it was better than the previous one. And it was the first time I got excited about a new OS and iOS in quite awhile. Good thing Jason has a developers license and all the new fangled business can go on my phone now instead of in a few months like everyone else. (Also, Blogger doesn't recognize "fangled" as a correctly spelled word. I'm disappointed in you Blogger.)
9. And finally, Lily now has to be my friend forever because she picked out the beads for her bracelet.. and I made her one just like mine. I win.

Looking up

The sky has held particular interest to me this year- I'm not really sure why. I find myself constantly taking pictures of the clouds. Every time I can't help but think have the clouds always been like this? Has the sky always been this blue?

If I didn't have so many small children, I imagine I'd spend a heck of a lot more time staring off into the blue. We've had some great looking sky in New England this year. And probably other years as well.

Maybe I should have been a meteorologist. Or a nephologist (someone who studies clouds- yes, I looked it up).

My work-with-what-you've-got garden

The last few days have been annoying, frustrating, and the thing that started it all off could have killed me. Well, I don't want to say that (even if it's true)- I'll just say I, as well as others, could have been seriously injured.

But enough about that.. let me gush more about my windows garden. Or indoor garden? I don't know. I had left a lot of the pots outside during the rain, because I didn't realize it was going to be as bad as it was. When I checked on them this morning, the first thing I said was "oops."

Although all the pots are self-draining, one of them had had enough and was full of water, drowning and semi-burying in dirt its small tomato plants. I dumped all that out, unburied the sprouts, and coaxed them to stand up again. One of the big bean plants had bent near the top due to all the wind. So oops again.

I fixed it up as best as I could with new, longer bamboo skewers (yes, like for shish kabob) and tin foil. Yes, tin foil. And this is why.. my normal fix is tape (scotch, painters, etc), buuuut.. tape wasn't going to stick to wet bean plants. I also thought I'd go back to string/yarn, but it doesn't seem to work as well- only offering one-point of support. (I have also used twist ties in the past, which are better than string.) The tape works well because you have as many points of support as the tape is wide. (I'm such a gardener.)

I was going to try strips of paper, but then (light bulb!) I thought of the tin foil. Like tape, but better! It can get wet, has many points of support, and is bendable. It's easily adjustable, you can slide it up or down the stem as needed, etc.

You think this is crazy? Another one of my bean plants snapped in two places almost 2 weeks ago due to a mishap with a window- I straightened it out, taped it in place, and voila! It's fine. Sort of fine. Fine as in not dead, not wilting, is ready to open a flower, etc- but also not able to stand unsupported anymore. So I basically have bionic/Frankenstein plants. My plants are held together with tape, whatever, so are a lot of things in life.

On the other side of all this nonsense, many of the plants are nearly ready or have already started to flower.. and that's so exciting for this very light green-thumbed girl.

Yes, I'm totally aware of how ridiculous of a gardener I am, but when I have home-grown beans and cucumbers, I will be much less ridiculous. In theory.

Window garden photo shoot

I walked around the house today photographing my garden. I mean, I walked around the inside of my house photographing my garden. For the first time, I actually have plants that made it past infancy, and nowhere to put them. Of course.

Almost all the sunflowers died. All of the peppers are gone. And the pumpkins (which is just as well, because I wouldn't have been able to grow those in my window garden). The carrots didn't make it, the onions and lettuce are.. I'm not sure if what they're doing is normal, or..

But.. the beans are doing awesome and so are many of the cucumbers. The tomatoes are so small.. but still alive. There are various flowers that could actually have blooms at some point. Only one of the strawberry seeds sprouted, but it's so tiny.

As it's only the beginning of June.. I have hope still for my little window garden. Or windows garden I guess- since it has expanded to three windows now. So maybe my thumbs are a very, very light green after all.

When you're four, making friends (even the boy kind) is easy

I know the kids that Lily plays with the most at school- two girls and a boy. She's played with the boy, C, since she started school, but they both used to get in trouble. A lot. So the teachers would try to separate them. Now I think they're doing a lot better, because I haven't heard any stories otherwise in months.

Then I started hearing about the girl, S, a lot. A lot a lot. Pretty much everyday. Aand they would jump up and down squealing at each other when I would drop Lily off at school. All very cute.

The third child is another girl that I've been hearing about more recently, but Lily never knew her name. I kept encouraging her to find out, but also said that I would ask her teacher if she felt too awkward asking her friend after all this time. Then one day, she just asked while I was standing there. The way the girl said it- her whole name, OA, was amusing to me. So now that's what Lily calls her, even though I've explained several times, I think the A is her last name.

I regularly ask about other kids in her class (sometimes making up names to check if she's listening). Did you play with Amelia? Did you play with Maya? How about J? "No," she told me last time I asked, "J, doesn't play with me."

Why not?
He doesn't like girls.
Oh, I'm sure that's not true.
It is.
His mommy is a girl, I'll bet he plays with her.
Ya, but not kid girls.

She had never really talked about him, but I remembered him from when she first started school. He chattered at me quite a bit one day, saying "look at me, look at me" every time he'd try to get the basketball through a low hoop. And then he'd turn to his teacher and do the same.

The day after we had the conversation about J, Lily happened to wear her sweatshirt that looks like an Iron Man suit to school. Aaand the very first person that saw us when we came in the door was J. "Iron Man!" he screamed at her. "I like Iron Man!" (And I smiled to myself.) Lily told him that she did too. "I have an Iron Man toy," he told Lily and a boy sitting at a table near them.

They start talking about Iron Man and heroes in general. I'm almost positive they were saying "heroes" and not "super heroes," but then the boy at the table interjects that "heroes aren't real."

I looked down at him and thought who the heck are this kid's parents? You're four years old- heroes are totally real. The three of them were practically yelling at each other over it, so after quickly telling Lily to "be nice," I took that as my cue to leave.

When I picked her up that afternoon, who was the very first one to scream goodbye at her? J. "So, Lily," I said to her outside. "I'm pretty sure J is gonna be your friend now."

Target shopping spree

I love Target. It is hands-down and by far, my favorite store to shop at. And the only store I regularly get to shop at in person any more- thanks to my children's general lack of patience (no idea where they got that from) everything else is done online.

I even buy the majority of our groceries there since we got the expanded grocery sections in all our local Targets. Sometimes I think the only good thing about where we live is that there are four Targets within half an hour of us. Yup- FOUR. (Aaand they all have Starbucks inside now, too. Hooray.)

Their kids clothes are generally really cute, the food prices are better than our local grocery store, they have everything you'd find at a drug store, and a pretty good selection of most other household and life needs as well. The only real problem I have with Target is that every penny I save (and more probably) with sales, coupons, deals, etc-- immediately gets spent on things that I didn't intent to buy.

Like today. After we took Lily to school, Noah and I went to Target.. for food shopping. Honestly. But I cannot help walking through the baby/kid section every time "just to see." This time I just happen to see 2 shirts, 2 pairs of pants, 2 pairs of shorts, and a 6-pack of socks that came home with us.

Summer doesn't officially start for another two weeks, but a lot of the spring and summer stuff was heavily discounted already. So, even though an impromptu shopping spree happened.. it happened cheaply.

I bought..

1. Green/white pinstripe Cherokee cargo shorts (for next summer). Was $9.00, marked down to $2.70.
2. Red/orange plaid Cherokee cargo shorts (for next summer). Was $9.00, marked down to $2.70.
3. Red Circo athletic pants (for the fall). Was $8.00, marked down to $2.40.
4. Blue Circo athletic pants (for the fall). Was $8.00, marked down to $2.40.
5. Plaid Genuine Kids (OshKosh) short sleeve shirt.. Was $10.00, marked down to $7.00
6. Plaid Cherokee long sleeve shirt (for the fall). Was $10.00, marked down to $3.00
7. Circo monster, striped, and solid 6-pack of socks. $5.99 (not on sale, but Lily needed socks)

Was: $59.99, Paid: $26.19 (saved $33.18 or 56%)

Thanks again, Target.

We make washing the floor exciting

"We had giant ants last night. I washed the kitchen floor. Noah put his mouth on bottle of cleaner. Called dr and poison control. Good times."

So.. ants. We have/had giants ants. I'm hoping it's had, but.. only time will tell. It started downstairs last week.. and then Monday night while I was making dinner I saw one in the kitchen, near the table. And then another one. And another one. So I knew I was going to have to clean and wash the heck outta the floor, radiators, etc. Fun.

I moved one half of the kitchen into the other half and cleaned away. I vacuumed, sprayed a disinfecting cleaner on the floor along the walls, and then washed the floor with a bucket, rag, and brush. Oh ya.. I wasn't messing around. I got everything ready, snapped on my giant cleaning gloves and announced to the ants.. "now you're all in big, big trouble!"

After the first half of the floor was done, I picked up my bucket, hobbled into the bathroom to clean myself up, and then sat on the couch to die take a break.

Then I heard Jason yelling from the kitchen. Noah had come up behind him, gotten a hold of the floor cleaner, and stuck the nozzle in his mouth. Apparently in all my I'm-going-to-die hunched over hobbling to the bathroom silliness, I hadn't picked up the bottle from where I had left off. And although the kitchen was mostly blocked off, my little toddler found a way through.

Jason was convinced Noah was going to die, although I eventually determined that mostly nothing had come out of the bottle,. But of course there was still cleaner on the sprout. I tried to clean his mouth out a little bit, gave him a piece of bread, and tried to get him to drink his milk. Jason participated in the evening's events by overreacting. A lot. And Googling things.

I thought Jason would feel better if he called the pediatrician himself- and we'd also know for sure what else we needed to do. He refused- claiming he would just get hysterical. (No, really?) So eventually I called them.

I got transferred to 3 different people- none of whom answered the phone with anything other than "hello?", so it was somewhat awkward not knowing who I was talking to or what sort of medical background they had. The final person was the on-call nurse at another office who told me to just call poison control and they could help me.

Since I was in the middle of making Lily's cheese sandwich, I had Jason do it. He got off the phone with them acting like he hadn't ever been hysterical at any point. Apparently they said Noah was probably fine and to call back if he started coughing. He didn't.

Now.. at this point, let me say.. the floor cleaner I was using wasn't even mine. And I didn't even want to use it, but Jason hates all my organic/"safe"/whatever cleaners (Method, BabyGanics, 7th Generation, etc) and I wasn't in the mood to hear a rant about it from him- so I used the horrible, nasty, chemically cleaner instead. I hate when I don't listen to myself and then stuff like this happens. Because, just for the record, do you know what the back of the Method floor cleaner that I was going to use says? "If swallowed drink a full glass of water." So. There.

(And after I was 100% sure we weren't going to have to go to the emergency room.. and bring the bottle with us.. that horrible thing went right in the trash.)

Aaaaanyway, Noah was fine. He's still fine. I, on the other hand, am in a little bit of pain. Because after all that excitement, I still had the other half of the floor to clean. And I did. And then I did the dishes. However.. the kitchen floor is the cleanest it's been in.. I don't even know how long. Walking on it is actually a tiny bit thrilling.. it's almost like ice skating it's so clean and almost slippery.

And then Tuesday happened..

"Found 3 giant ants in the living room today. Moved everything vacuumed the heck out of carpet and couch. Am probably going to die now."

Making beaded friendship bracelets

I thought it would be fun to make myself a simple, beaded bracelet. Beads, floss, a clasp, tie some knots.. easy. No, this isn't the intro to a disaster- I'm being serious. And you can do it too..

When gathering up supplies for this, keep in mind the thickness of your floss (or whatever you want to use as the "string") in relation to the size of the holes in the beads- you'll need to be able get two strands threaded through the bead. I used regular embroidery (dmc) floss and the large-sized seed beads.

My wrist is about 6 and a quarter inches around, so I cut the middle floss piece to be about 19 inches long and then doubled it over (through the clasp). [This was longer than I needed it to be, but it was nice to have a little extra length at the bottom to temporarily hold the beads until I slid them up into the bracelet.] The middle strands can be any color as you will only see a little bit of it near the clasps.

 
I cut the longer floss for the side pieces (used to tie knots) at 24 inches- and doubled it over as well. [It was several inches longer than it needed to be, but you do want the longer piece to be at least a few inches longer than the short piece.] The color of this piece does matter- it's the color you will see between and along side the beads.

Once you have your 2 pieces of floss, slid both through one of the rings on your clasp. Adjust each piece of floss so that the clasp is in the center and then tape it onto a table, clipboard, or other hard surface. [I used my daughter's plastic Crayola clipboard/travel case.] You don't want to use a tape that's too sticky or it'll pull at the strands in the floss- I used painter's tape.

To save you from taping and untaping the bottom strands for each bead- add about 15-20 beads to the middle (shorter) strands and leave them near the bottom. Once you've done that, then tape the ends of strands down- I found it easier to make the knots when the piece is pulled tight.

Tie half of a square knot* around the middle strands with the longer side pieces, then slide one of the beads up from the bottom.

[* Take the long, right piece, leave a little bit of a loop and weave the end under the shorter pieces and lay it on top of the left, long piece. Take that piece and weave the end through the loop made by the right piece.]

If you've made it this far, the rest is easy. Just repeat the knot and sliding a bead up to the top until all the beads have been used. Then add more beads to the bottom and keep going. The bracelet is going to start twisting the longer it gets- tape it down if necessary.

When the bracelet is long enough, attach the other end of the clasp. I knotted the ends of the floss to the clasp in a rather unfancy manner, but it looks alright anyway. The finished length of the bracelet (including clasp) that I made was 7 and a quarter inches. There was plenty of floss left, but that was enough for my wrist and I just trimmed off the excess length.

My son has had a great time yanking on it, but it's held up well so far. And even if it does break, the beads won't go flying- which is one reason I love these types of bracelets.

what we did the last few weeks

1. An atypical dinner in our house. That's right, as in not typical. I can't say I really like having that much stuff on the table for a meal, but..
2. I moved this giant IKEA cabinet to the other side of the living room. By myself. And I certainly will tell anyone that will listen thanks!
3. Spring is my favorite. As is a tree lined street- this is what you want your street to look like.
4. Lily told me what this set up was about, but now I forget the intricate details. I think it was something about the two groups in the background possibly being afraid of the "Yoshi monsters?"
5. Noah's tray from above.. complete with.. no, not a cup holder, but a car holder.
6. The neighbors tried to burn their house down earlier this week. Or maybe they were burning a dead body. Or using up their last cans of lighter fluid. I don't know.. there was a lot of smoke and a lot of flames.
7. I saw this Snoopy shirt at Old Navy and I don't know.. I just thought it was so funny. I mustache you a question..
8. This butterfly was flying around and around one spot in the driveway. At first I thought it was dying, but then I eventually lost track of it.. so it must have just wanted its picture taken. I couldn't believe I got closeups with two little ones running around trying to "see" the butterfly too.
9. First pool day of the year. First pool day of my life with TWO small people. Two small people that needed help with their swimming attire and sunscreen and shoes and hats and toys and towels and whatever else wasn't nailed down. Plus most of that for myself too. I'm pretty sure this summer is going to kill me.. and it's not even here yet.