It takes a Village...

...to get M to eat two chicken nuggets. 

Our house has been hit by some variation of the plague. Its the version where you feel just bad enough to want to sleep all day and night but your kids feel just bad enough to never sleep, day or night. There is a nice balance or symmetry in that, maybe it's irony. It is obviously something I will find more humorous at a later date.

M and I both weren't feeling great so I worked from home yesterday and she helped me appreciate the fact I'm not normally a work-from-home or stay-at-home mom. (Please don't read that as a judgement on either of those moms. I admire anyone that can stay at home with kids, their own or someone else's, and not lose their minds. If you can stay at home with your kids and still get outside work done, you're one step down from a magician as far as I'm concerned).

M was honestly fantastic. She worked on her 'puter for a while next to me, we sang the "A B C D's" and other songs while I worked on my spreadsheets. I had a delightfully entertaining conversation with M while the IT guy was on the phone, about puzzles and mermaids, he was thrilled I could tell. But mostly, the day reminded me what she an awesome little person she is.

It's important to trace your toes every so often while at work.

It was a good day as far as working-from-home-while-not-feeling-good-with-a-toddler days go, but by the time dinner rolled around, my patience for negotiation was completely gone. Hot dog or nuggets; pick one, we have things to do. There was an ice cream fundraiser we needed to get to and it seemed like Ice Cream for Dinner was a precedent I didn't want to set.

L eventually grumbled her way though a hot dog, grapes and milk. M downed her grapes and milk and refused to touch the nuggets she had so adamantly needed a few minutes earlier. I committed a giant parenting error earlier in declaring "No ice cream if you don't eat your dinner!" Why do I say things? Enter part of our village! The lady that formally ran our little day care stopped by and, like magic, M agreed to eat her nuggets. She ate them so we couldn't feel them to our dogs, her sister, really anyone else we could think of to offer nuggets to. Turns out she didn't really want them, but more importantly, she didn't want anyone else to have them either.

Dinners eaten, visiting done, we took off for ice cream. Everyone enjoyed their flavor of choice with no negotiations or bribing needed. I wish you could make delicious ice cream out of broccoli, but I'll be happy there is calcium, protein and calories in it as is, plus it doesn't taste like broccoli.

Funny People

Today's brief story comes from people way funnier than me. The photo is L and her second cousin at the 94th birthday party last weekend. The caption is by my cousin, pure genius I tell you. 

My cousin envisioned this being the end of this conversation:

     R:  Really?
     L:  Yes!.. I would not kid you about this.
     R:  Eat... or...
         < interrupting >
     L:  Starvvvvvve

Tomorrow is Friday so you know what that means, Panera magic is happening right now at my house. Maybe it has nothing to do with the booth and everything to do with the white bread and non-all natural peanut butter. Regardless, its a good night.

Mixing & Matching

We celebrated my grandmother's 94th birthday this weekend. Family flew in from far and wide to join in the festivities. With big families, there are always a myriad of different personalities. I have one cousin, in particular, that is incredibly high energy; she is as extroverted as they come. I am not; I'm not especially quiet or shy, but I prefer quiet, small groups, the edge of the party rather than the center. 

My cousin flew in Friday evening and stayed with us until Sunday afternoon. It was a phenomenal weekend of family and catching up. It was the perfect reminder that we are all a little bit of each other, mixed and matched to fit together into a family. While we all hold a lot of differing views and ideas, we are all related and therefore, we all love each other, even if "damnit" is sometimes added to the end of that sentence.

As we sat at dinner on Friday evening, I couldn't help but notice how enthusiastically my girls responded to my cousin. She was full of pep, stories, games, and energy. She never seemed to tire of their questions and stories and she never lost her patience. I wondered if my kids were missing out by me being so, me. Would they be happier with a mom that was funnier? Would they be more adventurous if I made their worlds more of an adventure and less of a routine? Would Eat or Starve even be a thing if I was always pushing new boundaries, and taking them to experience new things? I started to wonder what it would take to push me to that level. Did I have it in me to be that person if that's what my kids needed? (Side note:  I do not. And, anything that would get me to that level of extroversion cannot and should not be legal).

On Saturday we drove to the party. At the, probably joking, request of my Aunt we brought L's violin so she could give a "concert." The afternoon flew by with lots of cake and cupcakes ingested. A small group of 3 or 4 people were chatting with L toward the end of the party. She had taken out her violin and was getting ready to play. With her back turned toward the room, she didn't notice about 12 of us gathering around. She played her little I've-only-had-one-30-minute-lesson heart out for a few minutes. We all applauded. She turned around to look at us with a terrified expression and started sobbing.

Private concert, at home. We have been promised she will be playing Twinkle Twinkle by the end of the school year. I have nothing but admiration for her teacher.

I scooped her up into my lap. She was embarrassed by the attention, exhausted by the festivities, and on a nasty sugar high. We sat for a few minutes just being quiet. Finally she said she was feeling a little better and agreed to take a walk with her dad. I know L gets overwhelmed. She gets a little too in her own head for her own good, both her parents are like that as well.  I realized, as she sat with her little face buried in my shirt, she does need to be pushed and prodded to explore outside of her comfort zone, so do I. But, she also needs a quiet place to come back to when she needs it.

Some people feed off other people's energy, they are amazing to be around and can motivate entire groups to do things they would otherwise not do (aka family pictures) all while making it fun. Other people need stillness to re-energize.  One isn't better than the other, its just different. I wish I was more of an outgoing person, but I'm not. I can push myself to be more outgoing, but I will always need my down and alone time to re-center myself. My kids seem to be the same way. Turns out we were all mixed and matched together just perfectly.

Less is More

The first full week of school and day care is one day away from being in the books (aka its Thursday night, finally). We have embraced the idea of not overbooking our children, which has been fairly easy up to this point. L is only 4, there just aren't that many options for 3 and under. With the school year beginning, L is suddenly doing swim lessons, soccer practice, soccer games and violin lessons. To be fair, violin lessons are during school hours so they probably don't count, and soccer games don't even start for a few more weeks. Basically we have two nights dedicated to kids events and that will soon change to two nights and a weekend day. I think team sports and swimming and music are all valuable experiences, I just think I don't want to venture down this wormhole this early.

My first run at retrieving both girls from both different locations after work/school took almost an hour and a half. That's about 45 minutes too long. Unless I start leaving work at 3:30 everyday, we will not be making it to our scheduled events. I'm sure as road construction projects end and I learn the process for two different pick ups, we can shave some time off our new routine, hopefully. Today though, was not that magical time in the future where I'm suddenly the organized, non-frazzled mother that effortlessly gets all this stuff done; today was the harsh reality that you can't fit 60 minutes of stuff into 15 minutes of actual time.

Obviously, since I haven't mastered picking the girls up from school yet, I didn't have a nutritious, delicious and amazing dinner prepped for tonight either. After 60 minutes in 98 degree weather watching L watch her teammates, my husband nixed my vote for pizza and suggested Panera, if M would eat something there. M agreed to a PB&J with the one condition that nary a molecule of jelly even think of touching her sandwich. We agreed.

I'm not sure if it was the white bread, the not natural peanut butter, the non-organic yogurt, or the three potato chips they each negotiated away from their father, but tonight, those girls ate. L even ate the crust of her sandwich, M ate all the way to the crust. M has this unnatural ability to separate, with almost surgical precision, her food from its crust. They even had a few bites of my apple. It was one of those family dinners you see on tv that makes you roll your eyes because never has an actual dinner been eaten by real people that goes that well. We had two delightfully happy and chatty little people eating their dinners with little to no threatening or bribing. I don't know what happened but I do know I plan on eating dinner at Panera, in that booth, every single night until the magic stops or they kick us out.

If you recognize this booth, stay away, the magic is all mine.

Karma Re-Balancing

M goes to the same daycare/preschool as one of her cousins. As we were marveling (out loud) at how enamored she is with the new place, how easily she had taken to the new routine, we heard the opposite reaction from her cousin. Maybe M could meet up with said cousin before drop off? Of course, we just invited a great karma re-balancing by bragging on our kid, M wouldbe happy to help.

Today M woke up grouchy. To be fair, we woke M up from a deep sleep. We had been out celebrating the birthday of a great grandmother the night before and our routine was off. She was out cold, we dressed her before she had any idea what was coming. M was not in the mood today, for anything. Would you like yogurt? NO! Would you like toast with peanut butter? NO! I WANT YOGURT! Ok... NO YOGURT! You know, toddler stuff, the entire morning.

At drop off my husband obviously ran into M's cousin, who was handling drop off like a little champ (because re-balancing). Because I married into good people, my brother in law didn't make the sarcastic quips I would have "Oh, YEAH, M loves daycare..." Instead we got a thoughtful email about an hour later reassuring us the M had settled down after my husband left and was happily playing with some toys.

Hopefully the rest of the day went a bit better for everyone involved. L had her first full day of PreSchool, I would say I'm sure it went well, but I've learned my lesson for the day. We will what shape we are in after I pick everyone up. I'm not expecting much, so maybe the universe will reward us with spectacular days and full meals eaten. There's nothing to make a toddler mood worse than choosing Starve on an already tired, grumpy day.

L had a great morning. She was super excited to begin violin lessons today. This is her perfected Why-Is-My-Sister-Acting-Like-This face. I'm grateful they generally take turns having rough days.