rain can be a pain

if you haven't realized by now, i resort to rhyme when i just don't have much to say. 'tis the last week of summer school's coming so soon but it's really a bummer that outside's a monsoon. so we resort to a playdate inside with a friend but it will still be so great since our boredom will mend. i'll admit i'm imploring my sweet girl and big fella to withstand the pouring to go get our umbrella. but i'm the one who'll get soaked for my entourage on this day, it's no joke ... i miss our garage.

museum momma

some people want to see the seven wonders of the world. others dream of setting foot on every continent. for me, i'd be quite satisfied if i could take the kids to the local children's museum in every city we visit. the teams who design these things really know what they're doing. liam and susanna are absolutely ecstatic every time we walk into one. no matter where you are – we've gone to these museums in atlanta, raleigh, cary, hendersonville, charlotte, asheville – they all have certain things in common. you can bet your bottom dollar there will be a grocery exhibit, complete with carts, fake food, and cash registers. for some reason my kids are always drawn there first, which is fairly ironic since they're really only happy at the real grocery if a free sugar cookie is involved. [side note: chris finds it funny that the atkins family refers to these places as simply "groceries", and not "grocery stores". i apologize for this quirk. i come by it naturally.] in addition to the grocery, there is almost always some kind of lifesize rescue vehicle, like a fire truck or an ambulance. a theater or stage of some sort. an artsy/craftsy area. a train. basically, anything and everything that will captivate and enthrall the 2-5 year old crowd. last week, i drove the kids back to raleigh from spending a few days in charlotte with chris's parents. i figured we could stop off in greensboro and check out the children's museum there – a perfect halfway stopping point to stretch our legs, eat some lunch, and exert some energy. i hadn't told them ahead of time where we were headed, for fear that i'd get lost, or stuck in traffic, or really, so they wouldn't be hounding me the whole way there. but the second we passed by a sign a few streets away, liam, ever the observant passenger, started with, "mommy! it says children's museum! it says two blocks! it says go left! it says parking! THERE IT IS!" even now, five days later (which is like five years in adult time), the kids still can answer immediately when asked what their favorite part of the greensboro children's museum was. liam loved filling up the tank of the real racecar (surprise, surprise) and sitting behind the wheel. and susanna, even though she thoroughly enjoyed the post office and the mountain bikes, is apparently a diehard fan of the automatic faucets in the restroom.

potty-induced insomnia

perhaps it was the thrill of the olympics that drove susanna to dream big. or maybe liam picked up some random book on goal-setting from the library and has been reading it to her. whatever the case, apparently it wasn't enough for her to be diaper-free during the day. now she's intent on never wearing the things at night, either. my checkbook would be singing a happy tune if it weren't for the severe lack of sleep this is causing me. every night around 3 a.m., i awake to the sound of a shrill, "I NEEEEEEEED TO GOOOOOOOO PEEEEEEE PEEEEEEE!" and the rattling of her doorknob. seems she wakes up with the urge to go, makes it to the door, and then realizes that she can go no farther without some assistance. so i shake off the cobwebs of sleep, trudge down the hallway to retrieve her, carry her to the bathroom, plop her chubby self on the toilet, help her clean up, and put her back in bed. she then immediately returns to that peaceful state of rest as if nothing had even happened. unfortunately, i'm often awake for an hour afterwards, since i've struggled with sleep issues most of my life. you simply cannot abruptly wake up an insomniac in the middle of the night and then expect a happy ending. i am so affected by this recent turn of events that i've done my research (much of which, incidentally, has been conducted between the hours of 3 and 4 a.m.) turns out that young two-year olds physically do not have the bladder capacity to "hold it" for 10-12 hours. which means that there's really no hope for a full night's sleep at any point in my foreseeable future. so, remind me ... whose grand idea was it to potty-train her so young?

i heart our yard

until now, we've never had a back yard to speak of. our first house in raleigh was on the corner of the main drag in the neighborhood with no fence, so if we grilled out, we'd have a dozen people walking by asking us what was on the menu. we thought we were upgrading with our house in asheville, until our neighbors behind us decided to put in a pool and all of a sudden we were staring at a hundred middle schoolers splashing around every time we sat down in our family room. needless to say, a private back yard was way high up on our priority list when searching for houses here in raleigh. it's 6:30 pm on a friday evening. i'm sitting outside underneath two whirring ceiling fans, watching liam and susanna ride their bikes on the deck and having a grand time. chris and my dad (ever the loving grandfather) are setting up a super-duper playset in our big wooded section. we can sort of see one neighbor's house in the distance, but i think we could sit out here in the nude and no one would be the wiser. (never fear ... we won't. the mosquitoes are biting.) there are still boxes and boxes to be unpacked, artwork to be hung, and window treatments to be installed. i sort of dread walking inside. but outside, it's perfect. and well worth the ten-month wait.

movie morals

there’s a local theater that runs the best program during the summer. they play second-run children’s movies at 10:00 a.m. on tuesdays for free. the only thing that costs money are the snacks, and even they’re cheap. it’s a fabulous way to spend a few hours out of the heat. the most amazing thing happened to me at this movie theater last month. i had slipped a $20 bill into my pocket, and on our way back from the restroom, susanna and i stopped by the concession area for some popcorn. i reached into my pocket for the money – but it wasn’t there. i tried my other pocket. not there either. frustrated with myself, we returned to our seats, where i dug around my bag, my seat, the floor … and still came up empty-handed. then i started second-guessing myself, as i always do. am i sure i put it in my pocket at all? could i have left it in the car? but a minute later, i was immersed again in “bee movie” (it’s fairly entertaining), and forgot all about it. a short 30 minutes later, susanna turned to me once more with the urgent whisper, “i need to go potty!” and since there is no such thing as, “do you think you can hold it?” to a newly toilet-trained child, i immediately whisked her away to the restroom again. as we were walking out, an usher approached me. in his outstretched hand was a $20 bill. “ma’am, i think you dropped this.” i looked at this teenager, incredulously, for two reasons. one, i couldn’t believe he had actually tracked me down among the throngs of people there that day; and two, i couldn’t believe he was actually returning this money to me, when it was more than he probably makes in three hours of work. “i found it on the floor, and went to the security camera to review the footage to figure out whose it was,” he explained. "i've been looking out for you ever since." i thanked him profusely, and talked to the theater manager to share my gratitude. what i really wish i could do is to call the boy’s parents. there are not many teenagers who would go to such lengths to return a lost $20 bill. i want to know how they instilled in him that kind of moral sense in a world that, at every corner, encourages the exact opposite. i pray that chris and i are already laying the foundation to raise our children in such a way to ensure that, fifteen years from now, they too will be tracking down strangers and returning lost money to them.

i'm glad the birthday boy can count, because i sure can't

liam turns FOUR today!

call me crazy, but in the midst of a huge move, i just didn't have it in me to plan a big party. after three years of elaborate get-togethers complete with printed invitations, professional cakes, and themes (year one: fish; year two: bugs; year three: lake), i decided that this was the time to lay low.

of course, the first year i take the laid-back approach happens to be the first year that he actually cares. he's been counting down to his birthday for weeks now and bombarding me with questions about his non-existent future party. so, i had no choice but to relent a little, and invited a few of his good friends join us for ice cream at cold stone creamery last night. (all of them live within five minutes of us -- i hated to ask anyone to drive a half hour for dessert, which took less time than that to eat. we were literally in at 6:30 and out by 7:05.) no fuss, no frills. just ice cream. and really, what more could a four-year old want?

if you're more observant than i am (which is highly probable), you'll notice in the video that there are only three candles. it wasn't until we had finished singing to him that i realized my error. duh! years from now, the poor child is going to look back on pictures of this party in his scrapbook and wonder what his mother was thinking. either my math skills are getting rusty, or i'm subconsciously having a hard time accepting the fact that my firstborn baby is now four. if i'm permanently holding at 25, then can't he remain three forever?

 

coincidence? i think not.

the first evening we spent unpacking at our new house, chris pulled down the stairs to the attic to poke his head around and see how much storage space was up there. it was empty, save for two things: a few square feet of bubble wrap discarded in the corner, and an old photograph lying on the dusty floor near the door. he picked it up, intending to toss it in the trash, and then looked at it. it was a picture of susanna's godfather, bill, from the early 1990s. i have no idea where it was taken or, more significantly, why it was there. i called him immediately, and he was as confused as i was. either we can go down the road of being totally freaked out by this, or we can take it as a sign that this is definitely the house we're meant to be in. i think i'll go with the latter.

improving our moving by grooving

i just had to take a break from the sea of boxes consuming every square inch of our house. in my spare time, i've composed several limericks for your enjoyment. unpacking a house just ain't fun with kids, can it even be done? if you can remember don't ask in september for my patience, by then, will be none. and ... with each new box that i unwrap i ask why we have all this crap i'm stating my case: we don't have the space i just want to go take a nap. indulge me with one last effort ... i find one thing but not the whole pair and i'm tired of wondering where. procrastination is key hence this poetry my misery i wanted to share.

olympic memories

as all the hype of 8/8/08 approaches (if you've been living under a rock, that's the day the summer olympics begin), chris and i are reminded of the special connection we have with this four-year event. last time around, we were sitting in our family room in asheville enjoying the festivities of the opening ceremonies (or, rather, chris was sitting, while i was kind of sprawled out all over the floor, as i was nine months pregnant.) right around the time zimbabwe took center stage, i turned to chris and told him that i really wasn't feeling great, and left to go take a warm bath. four hours later, liam was born. so many of our first memories of liam are actually tied to the olympics, since it was the only thing of any interest on television for the first two weeks of his life. i remember nursing him at 2 a.m. shortly after arriving home, wide awake since i had no idea what i was doing, while listening to table tennis in the background. (that was back in the day when i was sure the glare from the tube would fry his brain, so i actually had it on with the doors of the entertainment center closed.) note: it's unbelievable how serious some people can get about ping-pong. also note: it's rather boring if you can't see it. assuming we can figure out how to hook up our television in our new family room and that we can locate the necessary remote (two rather big assumptions, given the state of chaos our house will be in due to the move), we're hoping that we can sit down with the kids and catch some of this year's opening ceremonies. i really do love how the world comes together and celebrates the incredible achievements of such amazing individuals. in case you're interested, table tennis competition begins at 10 p.m. on august 12. and this time, we'll be watching.

the key to happiness is not key lime

we're ripping out all the existing floors on the main level of our new house and replacing them with hardwoods, a process that takes upwards of five days. so, even though we successfully closed on the house last week, the moving trucks aren't arriving until wednesday. this gives us a perfect opportunity to paint the kids' rooms and have at least those finished and ready by the time we get the furniture in. this house needs a ton of work ... so it will be especially nice to cross two rooms off our list. i've been working on susanna's "big girl" room for at least a year. after a gender-neutral yellow nursery and a blue sports-themed room for liam, i could not WAIT to do a girly room. her furniture is white, so i thought a lime green room with pink accents would be fun, and have been collecting pieces here and there since before her first birthday. i had a duvet made with fabric i found at a clothing sale, window treatments done in a cute green and pink paisley print, found a hot pink quilt at pottery barn kids, got some adorable flower wall cards at a children's boutique in asheville ... the list goes on. (and on and on, as chris says.) the last step was to get in that room and paint. after careful consideration and consultation with some interior decorator friends, "key lime" by behr seemed to be the perfect color choice. chris and i spent all of thursday night on the four walls of that room. everything seemed to be going well ... and then i walked down the hall to the bathroom. i came back and was almost blinded by the neon green hue pulsating from the doorway. i think the paint fumes had put us in a lime green coma or something, because all it took was a little perspective for me to feel like my eyes were about to pop out of my head. so, back to home depot i went, armed with the color palette and the need to go one shade paler. and back to the house we go tonight, to paint the four walls all over again. needless to say, chris is NOT enthused. but we girls learn from the first time we teeter on high heels that beauty is often pain. the pain of re-painting will result in a beautiful room that susanna will hopefully love (at the ripe old age of two, when she probably would be just as happy with mustard orange.) just one more thing that's been bothering me. key limes aren't even green, behr paint company. they're yellow.