PANIC!!!

It is official...I am without a babysitter.

I found a lovely girl about a year ago, who happened to be my son's swim instructor. She clicked with him right away, and as my son so rarely does this with anyone over the age of 12, I asked for her number right away.

She came once in a while to play with the kids so I could go to the post office or organize the basement. Sad, but true; this is mostly what I used the sitter for. The kids loved playing with her, and it freed me up to actually do a load of laundry without a child trying to climb me like I'm a tree. We also used her for a monthly "date night," but that was an easy gig, since we put the kids to bed ourselves and let her watch TV while we ate dinner out at a ridiculously late hour. (The kids didn't mind playing with her, but allow someone else to put them to bed? No way!) Of course, by the time we actually got out of the house, both of us were far too tired to even pay attention to the conversation, so date night was always pretty foggy.

But, as high school students are apt to do, she graduated and left for college. She strongly considered staying close to home for school, and it took considerable strength on my part not to beg her to make that choice. I chose the less selfish route of encouraging her to spread her wings and go away to school. I know...what WAS I thinking?

So, here we are, without someone to call up when I need to go to the doctor or hubby and I need a little sanity on a Saturday night. Sittercity, here I come. Hope it works!

Has it really been this long?

DId I really go the whole summer without posting anything? Oh, dear. Where did the time go? Summers always make me think this. I attended more years of school than I care to count, and after all of that schooling, I decided to teach for a living. Go figure. Thus, my life has always moved in the pattern of a school year. For most, renewal happens on January 1st. Good-bye to last year, resolutions for the new...you know what I mean.

For me, September has always been the time for renewal. Put away the beach bag, get out the school bag. Being on hiatus from the classroom has had its privileges. For example, I know the best days to take the kids to the Museum of Science so as to avoid summer/holiday crowds AND field trips! I've also discovered that people do, indeed, get out and about between the hours of 7 a.m. and 3 p.m. (Silly me! I always used to think that the world came to an abrupt halt between those hours!)

But here we are; it's September again. Being home with the kids has been nice in many ways (incredibly draining in others), but I'm missing that school bell, the PA announcements, the groans when I share tonight's homework assignment or the date the next essay is due. I'm trying to delight in the last bit of time I have left before Ryan starts Kindergarten next year and I cannot take him to the science museum the first day after Spring Break (tip to all the SAHMs out there...one of the least crowded days to go!) Yet there is still that small section of my heart yearning to sign hall passes and find out what the big kids did with their summers.

Happy September!

Here we are again...

Hubby's away and I'm parenting solo for a few days. Here are some are things I really wish I didn't do when he's away.

1. I wish I didn't get hooked on the computer and stay up waaaaaaaay too late and end up exhausted and full of regret the next day when I'm falling asleep during the afternoon marathon of Chutes and Ladders.

2. I wish I didn't procrastinate on the disaster-area clean-up by getting hooked on the computer. See item #1.

3. I wish I didn't eat so much. I eat when I'm lonely. Well, I do lots of eating at inappropriate times, but it's especially bad when I have only the TV, the computer, and lots of dirty dishes and scattered toys to keep me company.

He'll be back in a few days, but in the meantime, I shall spend way too much time aimlessly surfing the web, procrastinating on chores, and I'll eat way more calories than I should be consuming...ugh.

Vocabulary lesson

An exchange I had with my Big Boy today:

BB: "My sister is the bad guy and I am the Super Hero."

Mama: "Really?"

BB: "Yeah, she has a sword, but I have an expensive sword to shoo the bad guys away and save the people."

Mama: "Okay. So, what does 'expensive' mean?"

BB: "It means only Super Heroes and grown-ups can use it."

When I refer to my camera and my iPod as expensive and ask him not to touch them, this is how he has interpreted the meaning. I love this definition!

How do I know when an issue really is an issue?

Is the absolute inability to listen to one's parents an innate characteristic of a four-year-old, or should I be concerned? I'm pretty sure he has a filter for my voice. I tell him to stop doing something; no response. The voice gets louder and louder until the seventh or eighth attempt, when I am essentially yelling. I've been teaching him sign language, so sometimes I even yell at him in sign. (He can tell it's "yelling" by how emphatic my signs are and how angry my face looks. It might be more quiet, but it's essentially the same as raising my voice.)

At this point, I finally get a response, except it's anger and frustration at the fact that I am yelling at him. So, what's the deal? Is he testing my limits to such an extreme that he refuses to listen until I'm red in the face? Or should I be worried that he's so focused on what he's doing that he tunes me out completely?

This stage of development seems tricky to me. It seemed easier when I was just looking for the milestones the books tell me to expect. We wait and wait for the newborn to roll over and express grave concern when such a milestone seems late to us. But the doctor assures us that there is always a range for these things, and eventually, the babe does roll.

My approaching-two-year-old is supposed to throw tantrums and tell me "no!" I expect this. But I KNOW my big boy understands what I am asking of him. Must he wait until I've asked him so many times that I am feeling like the hold music on the pediatrician's phone?

Do your kids listen to you? How can I get mine to do it? Desperate (and highly repetitive) mom seeking advice...

This is what I've been doing this week

I serve as a Worship Associate at my church and we led worship this weekend. So, my writing time was spent working on the following reflection that I shared during the service. I thought it was fitting to post it here. Some of you might relate...


I spent some time in my basement last week, searching out items to contribute to the All Souls yard sale. I spotted an item tucked back in a corner that I thought would be good to send along to a new home. This corner contained many crates that have been stored since I cleaned out my classroom. The crates contain files and books that represent hours upon hours of work developing lessons and assessments for all of the books that I have taught in my high school English classes.

But the item that caught my eye wasn’t a crate full of files or books; it was a stool, like the kind you might see in a 1950s diner. It has a black vinyl top that swivels and chrome legs. It was a fixture in my classroom for many years, as I used it to lead the class. I couldn’t imagine teaching without it.

But I haven’t taught since my second child was born and it might be a while before I teach again, so I cleaned it off and thought I would let it go. Then I sat on it, and as I looked around my basement from my perch, I realized that I was not ready to say goodbye to my teaching stool.

This is the crossroads at which I find myself. I invested a lot of blood, sweat and tears (not to mention tuition money) to become a teacher. It was a job that was incredibly hard, but I loved it. Yet motherhood was a goal I always had for myself, too, and I set aside my profession to have children. I imagined that I would return to the classroom someday, perhaps when the children were old enough to be in school themselves and more independent. But my experience as a mom so far tells me that juggling these two roles would be extremely challenging. I imagine that the ever-present stack of papers waiting to be graded would always interfere with my ability to relax and enjoy time with my family. While I cannot accept the idea that I will never teach again, parenthood has led me to reconsider my career. I have been contemplating options that do not require me to bring home such a workload; jobs that require my focus during work time, but allow me to set aside work when I am home. Teaching is not such a profession.

So I find myself at a crossroads. My role as a mother is incredibly important to me, but how long do I set aside all else? I have pushed the “pause button” on my profession, but for how long will it be before restlessness sets in? How can I find a purpose outside of changing diapers and making meals that does not interfere with my ability to be available to my children?

What does one do when at a crossroads such as this? Ever make a list of pros and cons? Did it help you make an informed choice, or did it just confuse you even more? This is my tendency; sometimes I overanalyze a decision so much that I end up never deciding at all.

Of course, not every decision is as monumental as this one feels to me. We are faced with seemingly inconsequential choices that have very little impact on the story our lives will tell. Make coffee at home or stop at a drive through? Go to the gym or just head home to relax? Some might have more substantial consequences. Pay this bill, or put it off for a month in favor of another one?

As I was contemplating the topic of today’s service, I took to the internet to do some research. I came across a sermon delivered at a Unitarian church in Surrey, England by Reverend Linda Hart. She made reference to a short story by Kevin Brockmeier titled “The Human Soul as a Rube Goldberg Device: A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Story.” So, I made a trip to the library in order to read this story for myself. In this style of storytelling, the author uses the second person point of view, and the “you” in the story has a variety of choices as the day unfolds. Once the story is set up with the task of starting an ordinary day, you are offered the choice between putting on shoes to go out for a walk (turn to page 120) and spending “a quiet morning at home” (turn to page 154). Other choices are as mundane as choosing between grocery shopping and cleaning the bathroom mirror, or even between turning left and turning right. But not all of the choices are as simple. After witnessing a father turn down his son’s request for a skateboard by assuring him that he can buy all the skateboards he wants when he gets older, the reader is offered the following choices:

Is your adult life anything like you thought it would be? If so, turn to page 118. If not, turn to page 152.

And at the end of another scene, these choices:

Would you say that you’re not wasting your life? If so, turn to page 126. Would you say that you are? If so, turn to page 164.

Each choice leads the “you” in the story to contemplate different aspects of your life, from taste in music to the relevance of specific memories. Yet, regardless of what you ponder along the way, all choices eventually lead to page 146, where you find yourself lying flat on your back, facing an untimely end. (And, depending on which path you chose to take, this demise could happen in a variety of places, such as in front of your refrigerator, on the sidewalk, or in a coffeehouse bathroom.)

The choices we make on a daily basis will lead us all to the same end met by the character in the book. No matter which path we take, all roads lead to this destination. It’s no wonder that I find myself considering my options so carefully; if the path is all we have, it should be a good one, right?

But too many choices can paralyze a person and lull them into inertia. It is much easier to remain where we are than to choose a path and venture down it. After all, the crossroads seems pretty comfortable; no risk involved here, so just set up camp and hang out! And of course, choosing one path is a decision NOT to go down another. That’s a choice AGAINST a perfectly good set of adventures. Why would anyone want to turn that down?

But we are not meant to set up camp at our crossroads. Choosing NOT to choose is merely one of many options, and the adventure ends there. Then are we just relying on fate to get us through, taking the power of choice out of our hands completely?

So as I stand at my crossroads, I must remind myself that choosing a path does not imply lifetime commitment; I can return to the crossroads and try again. Or perhaps the direction I select will offer new choices and options, ones that I never imagined having at all.

The speaker in Robert Frost’s well-known poem contemplates the options and accepts the fact that we must choose. “And sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler, long I stood and looked down one as far as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth.” The speaker chose one path and “kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.”

But the paths we choose result in the person we are. Frost’s speaker “took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” We know not what that difference is until we reach the end of our maze of paths, but when we look back we will know that these choices have made all the difference.

A cure for a hangnail...

...and you thought I was going to say "hangover!"

My rough and tumble boy, with his innate skill at the perfect takedown, freaked out over a bloody hangnail. Pain was not the issue; it was the blood. Ironic, since his superhuman strength is sure to draw a lot of blood over the next few decades.

Hubby had to handle it, as I was out running errands, but he discovered that the best tactic for getting cooperation was a chocolate cookie. The promise of such a treat was the only thing that got him through a simple nail clipping. Now, if I could only use such bribery to get him to brush his teeth. But then again, that would defeat the purpose, wouldn't it?