the mann family

slice of life

2012-02-12T23:27:00.014-05:00

i'm afraid i've spent far too much time over the years on this blog describing how much liam and susanna are growing and changing and learning, to the detriment of talking about myself. for i, too, continue to learn valuable life lessons on a very regular basis -- lessons that broaden my horizons and improve my world perspective and make me a better person. i experienced one such lesson this very weekend that i'd love to share with you now.

any time you have dinner guests, you know they're true friends if they offer to bring something to contribute to the meal. i have never once turned down such an offer. this weekend we had two couples over for dinner, and one brought a delicious salad and the other brought bread. i stuck the bread in the oven to warm, and took it out while all six of us were standing around the island swapping stories. after trying rather valiantly to hold the piping hot loaf with my left hand so i could cut it, i gave up and grabbed my oven mitt.

as i was slicing with my brand-new super-duper bread knife that my parents gave me for christmas, i was also participating in the conversation and not paying terribly close attention to the task at hand. i picked up a few slices to place into the basket and noticed a strange red piece of plastic stuck inside the loaf . weird, i thought. i couldn't figure out what it could be, but decided i wouldn't mention it and discreetly threw it away. i should find out where they bought it, i decided, because i'll make sure to buy my bread elsewhere.

and then, a minute later, it happened again. there it was, stuck in the soft loaf -- another similar red plasticky something-or-other. this time, i really scrutinized it, worried that i might unintentionally be setting out to harm my dinner guests. it was firm but pliable and reminded me of the waxy substance that's often on top of wine corks. what if it's something dangerous? i wondered. something that might get lodged in their throats, or cause cancer, or flavor the entire meal and turn everything inedible? (to be honest, i was most worried about the last possibility, since i'd spent most of the day in the kitchen.) two of our dinner guests happened to be attorneys. i figured it would behoove me to figure it out.

i took off my oven mitt ... and it was only then that i realized what i had done. i looked up, sheepishly, hoping that no one had noticed. luckily i found four people still in the midst of their conversation, none the wiser. but the fifth person -- my loving husband of almost 13 years -- stood there smiling at me, shaking his head as if to say i-can't-believe-you're-this-clueless-but-i-love-you-anyway. (at least, that's the text i mentally ascribed to him in my closed captioning version of the scene. more likely it was something like i-really-did-marry-the-epitome-of-a-dumb-blonde, but i refuse to go there.)

so what are the lessons here, you ask? there are many. you should, for example, know the sharpness of your knife and what it's capable of. you should also have a sense of the actual size of your oven mitt. and perhaps it's wisest to just wait until the bread has cooled enough to hold it in place with your bare hands.

but the most important lesson i learned is one i plan to pass on to my children: choose your spouse wisely. make sure you marry a person who a) is interested enough in you that even after 16 years of being together, he still watches you closely enough to be aware of your mistakes; b) has the sense of humor to find such mistakes funny (and not embarrassing); and c) is so kind that just with a smile from across the room, you know that such a mistake is one that will remain just between the two of you.

(that is, until you decide to share it with the whole world on a blog. at that point, you might be on your own.)

a small fumble

2012-02-04T22:23:00.009-05:00

in addition to teaching my local delinquents who have been suspended from school, i took on a new job this past fall partnering with special education teachers throughout the state. together, we team-teach small classes of learning disabled students in a "blended" format that pairs online learning with face-to-face instruction. this semester, i'm teaching a brand-new curriculum called Introductory Math that focuses on very basic concepts, ranging from number lines to reading clocks and counting money. many are important life skills that should assist these students in functioning in the real world after they graduate from high school.

one of the most important aspects of my role is to create an announcement on their Blackboard page that greets them each day. i use a variety of web 2.0 tools, from cartoon strips to videos to vokis (funny-looking characters who speak with my voice) to animated images -- basically anything that will capture their attention and get them excited about what they're going to learn that day. on friday, i decided to tie in our current topic, integers, with the superbowl. i felt sure that somehow, negative numbers were involved with football, but i didn't know how. so i consulted the resident expert.

"chris, isn't there something in football that actually results in like a negative movement or something?" i asked.

he groaned. "i have explained this to you a million times," he replied, barely looking up. "yes. if the quarterback gets sacked, it's negative yardage."

"what if another player gets sacked?" i asked.

"sara! no other player can get sacked! it's only the person who's throwing the ball! you've been to football games with me before. how can you not know this?"

yes, i've been to football games. but when i attend these events, i prefer to talk to people and maybe watch the cheerleaders and comment on their skimpy outfits. i do not actually watch the field. in fact, i made it through four years of college attending just about every pre-game tailgate and only managed to enter the stadium one time, and that was to watch my sorority sister get crowned homecoming queen. and even then, i departed right after the ceremony.

"but what if, say, i'm the quarterback and i throw it to you, and then you run a little bit, and you throw it to someone else, and then they get like picked up and moved backwards?"

i won't go on. suffice it to say that there was much more groaning and frustration by the time we were finished. but the whole time he ranted and raved, i was busy composing a poem in my head, having latched onto the phrase "negative yardage". is there a word that rhymes with "yardage"? i wondered, amidst some string of nonsense coming out of his mouth about lines and scrimmages and other things. i finally wandered off and hoped he had finished. after a few rough drafts, this was what i loaded into my classes' announcements:

the next day i began to hear from my co-teachers, all of whom said that our students were excited to read the poem and see the connection between math and everyday life. i counted that as a success, and having received that feedback, was inspired to show the poem to liam.

he scanned the screen and said, "i know what goes in the blank -- the word 'negative.' BUT," he turned to me, "i'm afraid you kind of left out some stuff. like, it's only a sack if he's behind the line of scrimmage." and he proceeded to explain to me (very calmly and patiently) the ins and outs of this game that i do not understand. he didn't groan or complain or say, "how can you not know this?" in a condescendingly incredulous tone. he just simply, in his seven-year old refreshing way, explained it. i learned, for example, this "line of scrimmage" is not one of the painted white lines on the field. who knew? and i actually began to understand. a little, anyway.

chris got home that evening and i related the story to him, concluding with the informative lesson liam had given me. he stared at me with a sort of stunned look on his face before groaning once again. "I TOLD YOU THE SAME THING!" he said to me, exasperated. "i swear sometimes you just don't listen."*

i'm thinking from now on, if i ever have a sports-related question, i'm going straight to the expert -- the kind and patient expert, that is. liam.

* note: for the record, i'd like to admit that chris has every right to be exasperated with me. that doesn't make it any better, but i totally get it.

saved by the belle

2012-01-31T00:38:00.000-05:00

have i mentioned before that our daughter just happens to be a tad interested in princesses? i have? have i talked about how she beelines it to the disney section every time we're at the library, and has checked out every title the system owns multiple times? have i told you that stuffed in boxes in her closet are dress-up gowns for belle, cinderella, snow white, sleeping beauty, tiana, and accessories for ariel and rapunzel? (the glaring omission from this list of disney beauties is jasmine. she' a tramp. the girl needs to find an outfit with a higher neckline and a lower hem.)

the obsession began when she was, oh, two years old, and really hasn't waned since. even with newfound interests like gymnastics and art classes and choir, susanna gravitates toward all things sparkly and fancy and with an happily-ever-after at the end. so it was with elation that she found out that they were re-releasing "beauty and the beast" in theaters in 3D.

i'm not a huge fan of shelling out close to $25.00 (yes, you read that right) on two tickets to see a movie that we actually own, but the prospect of seeing it on the big screen AND in 3D AND with one of her best friends was just too good to pass up. we made it a girls' night, going to chick-fil-a with a coupon she had been given as part of an award from school, and then dashed over in the pouring rain to be captivated by belle and the beast for a few hours.

decked out in her royal finest, susanna sat next to me, mesmerized. and what's not to love about a heroine whose favorite pastime is reading books? she might be my favorite princess of all (and yes, susanna and i have had multiple conversations on this very important matter). she's a girl who's educated, is devoted to her father, and who falls in love by looking past appearances and into someone's soul. no wonder the movie was actually nominated for the 1991best picture oscar.

i just wish jasmine would take notes. and pull that hoochie mama top down past her rib cage.

come on, disney. a princess movie in 3D ... and no bedazzled glasses? it's kind of ruining the whole look

the reader

2012-01-22T10:30:00.009-05:00

there's big news in the mann family these days:

susanna is reading.

i hate to compare our children, so i'm not going to go into how young liam was when he began to read, but it is interesting to compare their two different learning styles. with liam, his reading seemed to be an all-of-a-sudden thing. i even remember exactly where we were when we realized he could actually read -- we were in our rental apartment when we first moved back to raleigh and were waiting on our house in asheville to sell. he was sitting on the floor in his temporary room, opened up one of those "i can read!" short little books that we'd just gotten at the library, and pretty much went to town. i remember screaming to chris, and him running from the other side of that tiny apartment, convinced that someone must have broken a limb. but we stood there, in awe, marveling at how our son had somehow overnight mastered this skill.

susanna, on the other hand, has been much more gradual. over a year ago she started recognizing smaller words, but stubbornly refused to go any further. "i know you know this word!" i'd encourage her as we read one of her many princess stories. but she'd refuse to play the game. "i don't want to read. i want YOU to read. so read," she'd demand. and not wanting to turn our reading time into something negative, chris and i would oblige, inwardly wondering how old she'd be before she finally decided that this was something she wanted to do.

so she began kindergarten as a master of her ABCs and not much else. and this is where i have to admit something that i'm embarrassed to say: i sort of doubted that her kindergarten teacher could accomplish much with our bullheaded daughter. i mean, if we, working closely one-on-one with her, couldn't get anywhere, how in the world was a teacher with 22 students of varying abilities going to achieve any more than we did?

(what's embarrassing about this is that, of course, i am a teacher. and i'd be offended if any parent ever voiced that concern to me. i can't imagine someone saying, "i just don't know how you're going to teach my kid how to solve a quadratic equation, since there are 29 other kids sitting around him." um, well, that's what teachers do. so why i questioned what she'd learn in kindergarten is beyond me.)

anyway, something must have clicked, or her teacher waved her magic wand, or ... well, her teacher used her talents and did what she's been trained to do. because after four months of elementary school, susanna is a reader. her face beams with pride as she works her way through her books -- haltingly, to be sure, but tenacious. one night last week she'd begun reading a dr. seuss book to me before i had to leave her to attend an online webinar. i suggested that she continue reading to her stuffed animals, a captive audience lined up on her bed. i returned a half-hour later to find her on page 51, sometimes pausing on the longer words but trudging through just fine. she looked up at me, beaming, so proud that she was almost at the end. it seems her stubborn streak has resurfaced as a determined streak. it's funny how what was once a frustrating personality trait has become something quite awesome.

susanna smiles a lot these days. she smiles when she receives a birthday party invitation, and when she finds out we're going to see beauty and the beast in 3D, and when she's allowed to choose a dessert at the grocery. but there's no question which smile i love the most: it's the one that lights up her face as she proudly reads. it's a smile of joy. a smile of accomplishment.

it's the smile of a reader.

holding all the cards

2012-01-11T23:58:00.014-05:00

i absolutely adore christmas decorations. we haul our boxes out of storage each year on the day after thanksgiving, chomping at the bit to get them out and festivate the house. (i totally just made up that word. i think i like it.) i love the electric candles flickering from the windowsills, the wreaths hanging on the doors and windows, and the fresh holly and stockings on the mantel. i even look forward to hand washing my christmas fine china and crystal to display in the dining room -- which is saying a lot since i hardly ever hand wash anything. this is why we start the season relatively early; not only do i just love the mood set by all these decorations, but it takes so much dadgum time and effort for us to get it all up that i want to enjoy it as long as possible.

but as soon as new year's day hits, i'm over it. the boxes are back out and ready to be repacked, soon to be bursting at the seams with the new additions that inevitably come via neighbors, friends, and school art projects. i find myself eager to start fresh, freeing the tabletops from their nutcrackers and angels and manger scenes, and regaining the much-needed floor space that's been held hostage by the christmas tree for the past five weeks. and when the kids ~~finally~~ depart for their first day back at school, i look around at my newly uncluttered, empty house, and breathe a small sigh of relief.

but it's january 11 -- a week and a half past the moment that we closed the storage room and bid a fond farewell to our seasonal stash -- and there's one big project i have left to tackle.

it's our christmas card collection. all 76 of the picture ones, anyway. with our new house layout this year, i mulled over how to display them, and ultimately decided to just attach them to the doorways in the kitchen that lead into the dining room and breakfast room. that way, we'd see them all the time. sure enough, on any given evening as i'd cook dinner, i'd be peppered with questions from liam and susanna: "who's that?" "how do you know them?" "what's a sorority sister?"

i'm not totally sure why i've hung onto the cards for as long as i have. perhaps it's the task ahead: for years i've stored them away in a huge photo album, trimming them down to 4x6 size and even going as far as arranging them alphabetically by last name. i know i'm going to run out of room with this year's additions and will need to make a trip to a craft store to find another album. (and yes, i'm aware at how this post is painting me in my most obvious type-A light. i'm learning to embrace my dorky side.)

but i think that it's really that i just don't want to say goodbye. the pictures of our friends and family have become, well, friends and family themselves. they've sparked long-forgotten stories that we share with the kids, from descriptions of playgroups in asheville (whose members, who at the time were tiny newborns along with liam, are now in the second grade) to recounts of trips chris and i made all over the country pre-children. we've re-lived weddings and camps and college days to a surprisingly rapt audience over dinner each night, and i think it's given liam and susanna a truer sense of their place in our lives. they might have thought that we really didn't exist before they came along, but they've started to see the larger picture. they're beginning to understand how we're part of a larger community of people -- some whom we've known for decades, some whom we've known for just a few months, and still others whom we've known for so long that we don't even remember how we know them. a community that's now represented on glossy photo paper and matte cardstock of various sizes, with return addresses from all over the continent.

tomorrow, i will take down the cards. at some point in the near future i'll place them in an album -- although i've sworn to myself that this year i won't worry about alphabetical order -- and will store the album with the rest of our christmas boxes until the day after thanksgiving next year. and on that day, we'll dust off the cover and flip through the pages, smiling at the 172 children (92 boys, 80 girls) smiling back at us, marveling at how many of them have grown. and then we'll eagerly await the mailman's arrival every afternoon as we begin to fill our kitchen doorways with our community once again.

wordless wednesday

2012-01-04T10:50:00.001-05:00

one of the highlights of our days when the temperatures don't reach much higher than freezing: hat head!

lord of the dance

2012-01-01T21:33:00.000-05:00

"have you seen that little blond boy dancing over there?" i overheard a woman ask her husband as i passed by them last night at our club's new year's eve party. "i cannot take my eyes off him. he's cracking me up!"

i knew without looking that they had to be talking about liam. i'd been getting similar comments all night, as friends and acquaintances stood around the dance floor in awe of our firstborn. as soon as the deejay cranked up the music, he hightailed it to center stage and did not stop moving for two hours. in chris's footage below, you can tell the moment that liam realizes he's being taped -- and his moves don't change a bit. he just beamed, loving every minute of doing his self-described "freestyle".

and what a perfect way to open up 2012 ... with a smile. may this be the year that, as the saying goes, we all dance like nobody's watching. (or, in liam's case, dance however you want, regardless of people are watching or not.)

happy new year!

2011: the year in review

2011-12-31T23:13:00.004-05:00

it's 8:30 pm on new year's eve, and, like 100 of our closest friends at our club, we have already partied and eaten and danced and celebrated and even counted down and rung in the new year. the balloons all dropped at precisely 7:30 amidst a chorus of ~~thousands~~ dozens of horns being blown by our children, and if we were cautious not to wake up on january 1st with a hangover, we'll now all certainly have one based on the sheer volume that's still echoing in our heads. think i'm exaggerrating? check out the footage below, courtesy of a friend of ours:

but with the closure of one year brings some reflection. on our way home tonight i thought about our highlights. here are the top three for each of us, in random order.

susanna

teeth: after months and months of rockin' in its socket, susanna finally lost her first tooth. and a few weeks later, she lost her second. she corresponded with the tooth fairy herself, and is now sporting an attractive gap on her bottom row .

the pageant: surprising all who know her well, she took on the role of mary in the christmas pageant like a broadway star. no insecurity or uncertainty like we all expected; she just accepted the role with excitement and smiled her sweet little smile the entire time she was in front of an audience of 500. and it occurred to me that the next time she'll be walking down the aisle of st. michael's in a veil will be on her wedding day. (and when that happens, let's just hope that there will be no baby involved.)

kindergarten: she was a teary mess the afternoon i picked her up from her evaluation day (when they meet the new kindergartners in smaller groups), but after she was assigned a teacher and learned that she already knew half of her classmates, she perked right up. she loves her class, absolutely adores her teachers, and enjoys the bus ride home in the afternoons. and with a big brother to walk her to her classroom each morning, how could her introduction to elementary school be anything but stellar?

liam

school: we had a rocky start to the school year with a new principal who tried to dismantle the plan we had in place for liam this year, but after a transition period, i'm happy to say that he's getting what he needs. he has exceptional teachers who understand him and challenge him and motivate him. and as long as he's happy and continues to love school, that's all we'll ever ask.(below is his first-ever project, a study on sunrise and sunset times for december.)

sports: i thank God every day that sports were invented. for if not, i'm not sure what liam would do with 95% of his time. this year he's played baseball, winter soccer, spring soccer, fall soccer, tennis, golf, swimming, and basketball. and if that weren't enough, he received a football and a (street) hockey goal for christmas and has spent the past week out in the cul-de-sac playing those. if you ask him his favorite, his answer is always whatever sport is in season; he loves them all. and you want to know what he likes to do just about as much as playing sports? watching them. he's been to hockey games, college basketball games, PGA golf tournaments, soccer tournaments, high school basketball tournaments, college baseball games, and professional hockey games (and i'm sure others that i'm forgetting). and you want to know what he likes to do just about as much as playing and watching sports? reading about them. the very first thing he does every single morning is run to the end of the driveway to pick up the newspaper so he can devour the sports section over breakfast. the boy is obsessed. (because i will never let him play organized football, i decided to indulge him a bit and chose a football picture to include in this post. the boy can throw a perfect spiral ... too bad it's the most dangerous sport in this country and his overprotective momma won't let him play it for real.)

Y guides: raleigh's Y guides program (the Y stands for YMCA) is the largest in the country, bringing together a dozen first grade boys and their fathers in a tribe that meets once a month and plans amazing outings. different tasks and activities earn them patches that they put on their vests, and each of them have their own Y guides name. (chris's is The Artful Dodger, in reference to his love for the los angeles baseball team. liam's is Wee Sports Fan, in reference to his love of Wii Sports.)

sara

the renovation: i have a kitchen i can cook in! and an office i can work in! and a breakfast room we can eat in! sure, the renovation process took twice as long as it was supposed to, required way more money than we'd anticipated, and necessitated us moving out for the majority of the summer, but all the pain was worth it. i still walk into my house and smile at what i see (and marvel at how we survived the house in its previous state for all those years.)

work: i took on an additional online teaching job in august, increasing my hours to an almost-full time schedule. so i still synchronously teach local seventh graders who have been expelled, but now am asynchronously teaching special education high schoolers from all over the state as well. it's been a huge adjustment for me but now that i'm four months into it, i think i'm finally getting the hang of time management. (i've never been a quick study.)
an empty nest: i'm not sure i'll ever get the hang of having the house to myself from 8:00 in the morning to 3:30 in the afternoon. most of those hours are spent on work, but i also spend a lot of time volunteering at the kids' school, being involved in activities at church, and playing tennis. i love the flexibility i have now that both kids are in "real" school, but my favorite part of day is at 3:25 every afternoon, when super and i walk to the end of the cul-de-sac to meet the bus. does seeing your children's smiling faces as they bound down the steps, eager to regale you with stories of their day, ever get old? i hope not.

chris

a new car: my poor husband had been driving around a car with 150,000 miles and a peeling sorority sticker on it for eight years. it was way past time to get a new set of wheels, and he finally did this fall.
recruited: *i had originally included something here, but thought better of it. check back in a week or so for an update (hopefully)*
the shed: so i get a new kitchen, and chris gets a new shed. seems fair. but this shed is nice! it has plenty of space to store all the outside crap and tools and toys and miscellaneous items that would otherwise have no place to go since our previous storage room is now our breakfast room. and to make it even more spectacular, he received a solar panel for christmas that he's attached to the shed's roof and can now generate power. how cool is that? (okay. it's not as cool as the kitchen. but still.)

family

a baby!: my little brother, ben, and his wife, laura, are expecting! they shared their happy news with us over the phone the night we came home from the state fair -- already on a sugar high from our funnel cakes, this just propelled us into another realm of joy. each night as we say our bedtime prayers, we thank God for "the baby in aunt laura's belly". and to make it even more special, the due date for my first nephew or niece (and the kids' first cousin) is actually may 18 -- susanna's birthday.

since we obviously don't have a picture of the baby, i thought i'd share one of us at the fair less than an hour before we learned the big news

a ring!: my little sister, leslie, is engaged! and the story behind how she shared the news is a good one ... on christmas eve, there were ten of us seated around our dining room table for dinner: the four of us, my parents, chris's parents, and leslie and richard (her longtime boyfriend.) the conversation was pleasant until liam decided to use his best seven-year old tactics to bring out the awkward. "so, aunt leslie, why aren't you and richard married yet?" but instead of an uncomfortable silence, leslie simply smiled and held up her left hand for us all to see. richard had proposed the day before in minnesota, and she hadn't breathed a word of her big news! (thank goodness for awkward seven-year olds, right?) we're now looking forward to flying out to california for the wedding sometime in 2012.

disneyworld: and speaking of trips, the highlight for the four of us this year was our venture to disneyworld in february. it took a lot of planning, a lot of driving, and a lot of $$$, but it will surely go down in the books as one of the best vacations we'll ever have. (and that's why, kids, we likely won't be going back any time soon. why mess with success?)

i say this every year as i sign off ... but our true highlights are the health and love and happiness and faith we continue to be blessed with. we strive each day to show our gratitude for all that we've been given.

and as the kids have been saying to everyone they've seen today ... "see you next year!"

the pageant

2011-12-26T22:22:00.003-05:00

thirty-one years ago the story goes that my mom hung up the phone one december afternoon and excitedly told me that i was going to be mary in the st. michael's christmas pageant on christmas eve.

and i promptly told her i had no interest in being mary. nope, i insisted, after she suggested i think about it. not gonna do it. so she called back the coordinator and let her know that i had declined the offer.

of course, as early evidence of my severe issue with indecisiveness, i woke up the next morning with a new attitude. "okay," i said. "i've decided that i will be mary after all."

and in an early lesson of tough love, my mom barely looked up from the paper. "too bad," she replied. "they've already found someone else."

i was devastated, but vowed to be the best pageant angel i could be. and then ... my luck changed. my mom got another call from the pageant coordinator on the morning of december 23rd, informing us that mary had come down with the chicken pox, and wondering if i'd like to take over.

and a star was born.

ha! hardly. for all the hype and hoopla surrounding the casting of mary every year, she really doesn't do much. gabriel, of course, steals the show, and even gets to hold a microphone to proclaim the good news. joseph talks about how his wife is going to have a baby and asks about room in the inn. shoot, even the innkeeper gets a few lines. but mary? nada. she just walks down the aisle looking as serene as possible and later places a baby doll in a wooden trough. still, i practiced all that day and the next, leading up to my big moment. and i suppose i did a satisfactory job, because there aren't any family stories of failure or embarrassment; of course, there aren't any pictures either. (maybe i have made this event into a bigger deal than it actually was at the time.)

but here's where i think the story actually does become a big deal, at least to me. thirty-one years later to the day, i sat in the front pew of the exact same church, and watched our daughter walk down the same aisle in the same costume. susanna was also mary -- a serene, sweet mary -- and surprised us all with her confidence. i felt sure that she'd get to church that morning and balk, since she has a tendency to change her mind at the last minute. (not quite sure where she gets that.) so i was mentally prepared to resort to bribery to get her to walk down that aisle. and who could blame her? it's one thing to agree to do it a few weeks ahead of time; it's quite another to stand at the back of the church and muster up the courage to trek down a 50-yard aisle with 500 pairs of eyes focused solely on you. but apparently we didn't give our reserved second-born enough credit -- because she never wavered.

and when i looked at her, i could actually see in susanna's eyes the same kind of reaction to gabriel's tidings that mary has in the bible. i could see her half-smile, her reluctance to bask in the limelight but her willingness to do what was asked of her. i could imagine susanna quietly accepting gabriel's news, surprised to be chosen, but sure of her abilities. decades ago, i had initially declined the offer. i wasn't sure i wanted to take on that responsibility; i didn't know that i was the right choice. but susanna? she knew that she could do it. she never doubted the outcome. she said yes.

"i am the Lord's servant," mary says in the gospel of luke. "may it be to me as you have said." with those two sentences, mary became one of the most important people in the bible, and certainly the most important in the story leading up to Jesus's birth. despite the amount of lines that are uttered in the pageant, we all know that it's not joseph's, or the innkeeper's, or even gabriel's big moment. it's mary's. mary really was the star of the show -- thousands of years ago in nazareth and bethlehem, and on christmas eve of 2011, in the form of a quiet and trusting blond-haired, blue-eyed, five-year old little girl.

receiving gabriel's message

mary, the little gray donkey, and joseph

lovingly placing baby Jesus in the manger

wordless wednesday, christmas style

2011-12-21T21:36:00.000-05:00

meeting the big man at our club's santa brunch

enjoying the craft table at the museum of history family holiday party

one of the four main christmas food groups: cookie dough

making gingerbread houses at school

gofster's back, making snow angels on the dining room table

gofster vs. barbie in a game of guess who (notice that they've chosen the characters sarah & chris) ... my money's on gofster to win

stuffing build-a-bears at the club for duke children's hospital

they were thrilled to be given matching christmas pajamas ... wonder how many more years that will last?

an instant message

2011-12-19T08:34:00.000-05:00

this is a story i first shared on the blog a few years ago. i revised it and contributed it to our church's annual book of advent devotionals.

I stared at my computer screen on a December day a few years back, feeling the same emotions that had plagued me for months. I was frustrated. Disappointed. Bewildered. This was not the career path I had envisioned when I graduated from college with a degree in mathematics.

Once upon a time, my career path was what I had envisioned. After dreaming of becoming a teacher for as long as I can remember, I saw my dream realized; I taught middle school math for eight years in three different school systems and loved just about every minute of it. I challenged and motivated and inspired my students, forging meaningful relationships with them that lasted long after they left my classroom. Last spring, my own children were even in the wedding party of a young woman I had taught when she was in the sixth grade. At every point in my life, I just knew that God had called me to teach, and I received daily affirmation that I was indeed answering His call.

But then I became a mother, and I answered God’s call to step away from the classroom, leaving behind a job I loved but eager to begin my new one. I missed my students but I always knew I’d return. So when, five years later, I was offered a part-time position teaching high school math online, I jumped at the chance. What could be better? I thought. It’s the best of both worlds: I’ll be teaching, but I’m still at home with my children.

Within weeks, however, I began to question my decision. This was a far cry from the kind of teaching I was used to, from the profession I so adored. My new students were all teenagers who had been expelled from school; they had committed an offense so serious that they were not allowed back on campus for the remainder of the year. All of a sudden, I wasn’t sharing my love of algebra with a room full of gifted and inquisitive children who hung on my every word. Instead, I was speaking through a webcam to a group of juvenile delinquents who often paid attention only during the commercial breaks of Jerry Springer.

It was on that December day that I had finally had enough. I had spent hours creating an interactive lesson that required my students to insert their responses on our webpage. But instead of insightful answers that demonstrated their mastery of the algebra curriculum, I saw my screen begin to fill up with phrases and drawings that were clearly gang-related. (The Crips all used blue ink; the Bloods used red. By this point I was already well-versed in gang vernacular.) Disgusted, I shut down the webpage and just sat there for a few moments in silence. This was not, I felt, what God was calling me to do. So why was I doing it? Why do I teach?

And then an instant message appeared on my screen, from a student who had just recently joined my class. I stared at the blinking icon for a few seconds before opening it. “Heyyyy Mz Mann,” it began. “I’m being induced to have my second baby tomorrow so I might miss class.” I typed a response immediately, letting her know I would help in any way that I could, but before I hit enter she had logged off. I wondered if I’d ever see her again.

But the next day, her username appeared in my virtual classroom. I texted her, asking if her plans had changed.

“I already had my baby,” she replied. “He’s in the crib right next to me and I’ve got my laptop in the hospital bed.” And not only was she present, but she participated in the class, answering questions and solving problems and stepping away only once, briefly, to change a diaper. When our class ended and everyone else had left, I spoke to her through my headset, telling her how much her dedication impressed me.

"Oh Mz Mann," she replied, "I need this. I need to finish high school. I got to show my kids that school's important. I don't want them making the same mistakes I made. I know I don't do that good in math, but I'm trying hard. I'm learning. I'm doing the best I can." I then realized that this online program was the best chance she had of finishing high school while taking care of two small children. This program, which I had begun to doubt was even worthwhile, was her lifeline.

I thought a lot about her that month, as we counted down the days to Christmas. Surrounded by images of Mary holding a baby Jesus, I couldn’t help but think of my student, a teenager herself, bringing a baby into this world in less-than-ideal circumstances. As we read Luke’s Gospel describing Mary’s total acceptance of the role that God had chosen for her, I began to evaluate my own role and what God had chosen for me. I wondered if Mary had mentors to guide her, and vowed to serve as a mentor of sorts to my student, who desperately needed role models in her life.

I knelt in church that Sunday in Advent, pondering God’s wisdom and timing with the birth of our Savior, and humbled by His wisdom and timing in my life, thousands of years later. I had asked a question, and the answer was so perfect and so complete that I had no doubt it was from Him. Because this – well, this is why I teach.

wordless wednesday

2011-12-14T01:25:00.007-05:00

as i seal my last christmas card (which has been even more of an ordeal than usual, given that i somehow lost my type-A excel spreadsheet with my addresses that i've maintained since the beginning of time), i was inspired to take a trip down memory lane. seems memory lane is rather short and only goes back to 2005, since i'm missing liam's first christmas card. still, looking back at these makes me realize how far we've come.

it also reminds me that getting an acceptable photo to use has always been, and i'm afraid will forever be, not for the faint of heart.

2005: a bald liam, and an announcement that another bald baby was on the way


2006: two new family additions: a teeny tiny susanna, and super. (incidentally, this is the only time super has graced our christmas card. you think getting a picture of two children is tough? try two children and a dog)

2007: matching smocked outfits ... how i long for the days ... this might be my favorite so far

2008: a move to raleigh necessitated a change of address card. look at those chubby cheeks!

2009: on day six of chris's annual i-don't-shave-at-the-beach week. next time, we'll take the picture on day one

2010: liam's missing some teeth and a belt (funny what i obsess over)

2011: and we're back on a swing. seems we've come full circle

farewell, chloe

2011-12-06T00:45:00.004-05:00

we said goodbye to a member of our family last month. actually, she was a member of our family before we were even a family, or before chris and i were even a couple. her name was chloe and she was the first car i'd ever owned. (i think back when i was 21, it was cute to give names to cars. i have since ceased this practice.)

chloe was my college graduation present, and i remember picking her up at a dealership outside of D.C. where i moved to start teaching at an alexandria middle school. it turned out that i was the salesman's first sale ever, and when he surprised me by taking a picture (with a polaroid camera -- this happened in such ancient history that digital cameras weren't yet mainstream) i think he was doing it as much for me as he was for himself.

even more impressive than my scrunched socks and high-waisted shorts is the fact that i actually located this photo among the thousands of pictures i have from the 1990s. apparently i used to actually print out pictures and put them into albums

chloe has certainly led an active life. less than a year after i got her, she was stolen and raced around in a high-speed chase in old town alexandria before the joy ride came to a sudden halt when the driver crashed into a police cruiser. an interesting tidbit: the thief was a fourteen-year old student at my middle school, who happened to find my keys in the stairwell and decided to grab a few buddies and take her out for a spin. i had unknowingly dropped my keys while lugging up a few boxes of manipulatives and didn't realize i had lost them until that afternoon, when i prepared to leave. i caught a ride home with a coworker and had chris drive me back that evening with my spare set. i'll never forget arriving to a completely empty parking lot ... and asking him to circle around one more time to see if the car might magically appear. it was all a bit surreal.

poor chloe. i've often wondered what happened to that kid who stole her. i'm still awaiting the restitution that was promised me ...

after two months of almost-total reconstruction (why the insurance company did not calculate it as a total loss, i will never understand) and 15+ years of driving around DC, raleigh, asheville, and raleigh again, the 145,000 miles began to catch up with her. she'd shudder when we braked on hills; in the summer, whenever we turned, cold liquid would seep out near our feet. this fall, we knew it was time to say goodbye and actually donated her to a local charity, who seemed incredibly grateful to inherit our family member.

chris is thrilled to finally have a new car that doesn't have a tri delta alumnae sticker on the back left window (and probably even more thrilled to have dry feet when the air conditioning is on.) the kids are excited to ride in the back seat any time they're given the opportunity. and i'm enjoying the stick shift -- it reminds me of the car i drove in college, when i was younger and carefree and without booster seats and goldfish crumbs all over the floorboard. i calculated that if this replacement car lasts as long as chloe did, we could very well be driving it when we drop off the kids at college. (shoot -- in 15 years, we could be driving it to liam's college graduation.)

so here's to a fresh odometer and a new set of wheels. here's to another 145,000 miles and the adventures they'll entail. and here's to chloe, beginning a new life wherever she may be.

the tooth shall set you free

2011-11-29T00:54:00.002-05:00

susanna lost her second tooth a few weeks back and began peppering us with questions that only the tooth fairy herself could answer. (and yes, i know i'm the most terrible mother of a second child, whose first lost tooth didn't even garner a passing mention in the blog ... suffice it to say that it happened sometime in late summer and it thankfully did not involve me in the least.)

so i suggested to susanna that she write down her most pressing question and leave a note for the tooth fairy beside the pirate doll that was holding her lost tooth. (to rub more salt in the wound, not only have i been remiss in sharing such an important milestone, but we also at some point have lost the special ballerina doll that is supposed to hold susanna's lost teeth, and have had to resort to borrowing liam's pirate instead.)

here is susanna's inquiry:

"Dear Tooth Fairy, What do you do with the tooth?
Love, Susanna" (punctuation mine)

and this is what she found tucked next to her special two dollar bill:

what i'm thankful for

2011-11-22T21:39:00.002-05:00

this was the conversation on the way to school one morning last week.

susanna: i don't think i really need you to walk me to my classroom anymore, liam.

me: you mean like he did the first few days of school, when i asked him to?

susanna: i mean like he has been ever since i started.

me (with an incredulous look in the rearview mirror): liam, have you really been walking susanna to her classroom for three months now?

liam: well, i didn't want her getting scared. that hallway has lots of kids in it and they're mostly older than her.

me (tearing up a little, i admit): well, you can stop doing it now if you want to. i think susanna's saying that she can handle things on her own.

there's a pause while susanna apparently mulls things over.

susanna: well, maybe i'll be lonely. so can you keep going with me, liam?

liam: sure.

the kids clambered out of the car, just like they always do, slinging their backpacks onto their shoulders and heading up the sidewalk to the entrance of the school, side by side, just like they always do. but that morning, i held up the carpool line for just a few extra moments to soak it all in.

indecision

2011-11-17T23:01:00.003-05:00

i swear i must be the most indecisive person on the planet. well, maybe not the most indecisive, but i'm pretty far up there. no -- i take that back. i actually do think i'm the most indecisive.

but in all honesty, i hardly ever make a choice that i don't later question. was there a better option? should i have waited? did i act too soon? did i get too many, or not enough? and so on. (and on, and on.) i've always hoped that this is one (of many) personality traits that skips a generation, but tonight, i saw genetics rear its ugly head in our daughter.

"what book should we read now?" susanna asked me as we were nestled into her bed for storytime.

"why don't you go over to your bookshelf and surprise me," i suggested. we had just finished the most awful story ever written -- something about barbie surfer girl turning into a mermaid -- and i knew that no matter what she came back with, it had to be a vast improvement.

she stood facing her bookshelf, studying the spines intently. she finally returned to the bed with three paperbacks and asked me which one i wanted to read.

"sweetheart, it's your decision," i told her. (and let's be honest. it's not that i necessarily wanted her to exercise her decision-making skills; i just couldn't make up my mind.)

"i know what to do!" she replied. "i'll do eeny-meeny-miney-mo." so she lined up the three books atop of her bright pink quilt and poised her finger in the air to begin, but then faltered.

"this is NOT going to work!" she sighed, exasperated.

"what's wrong now?" i asked.

"i can't decide which one to start with."

love notes

2011-11-11T18:04:00.004-05:00

it's amazing the effect kindergarten can have on a child in a mere nine weeks. susanna has gone from a timid, apprehensive little girl who came home from her staggered entry day (the day when smaller groups of kindergartners go for a few hours to be evaluated prior to the beginning of school) crying, to a confident, excited student who bounds out of the car at dropoff and never looks back. she adores everything about kindergarten and loves to regale us with stories of her days.

her metamorphosis is not only in her demeanor, but also in her learning. she now has an incredible grasp of numbers and is reading simple books fairly independently. but her favorite thing to do now is to write. she'll grab anything nearby -- a marker and a napkin, or a colored pencil and a notepad -- and sit down to document whatever's on her mind. i have to admit that it sometimes tries my patience just a tad when it's the end of the day and i'm scrambling in the kitchen to get dinner ready and am being bombarded with questions like, "how do you spell 'excited'?" and "how do you spell 'bicycle'?", so i just try to remember that this interest in writing is a really incredible thing. (even if i still sigh inwardly from time to time.)

i came across an interesting article a few months ago that really resonated with me, titled "how to talk to little girls". i'm embarrassed to admit how difficult it has been to change my habits since reading it -- i had no idea how much i, and everyone i know, emphasize little girls' appearances over their far more important traits. (please take the time to check out the article here to fully understand what i'm trying to say.)

so all that she's mastering in kindergarten has dovetailed nicely with my new goal of recognizing her achievements as much as i possibly can. my favorite projects of hers are the ones she does completely on her own, partly because she's showing more and more independence, and partly because of the pleasant surprises they are to us -- gifts, really -- when she proudly displays her work that we had no idea she was even doing. yesterday she grabbed my hand and said, "come, mommy! i made some treasures for you to see!" and in the kitchen, i found four little post-it notes affixed to various drawers and cabinets, and one more upstairs near super's bed.

but i was happiest to see the fifth one. it wasn't "i love my princess dress" or "i love my pretty hair". it was far more important. one that, as her parent, i will continue to remind her, and emphasize with her, and instill in her. one i hope she'll continue to say, and believe, for the rest of her life.

a quite wordy wednesday

2011-11-09T23:35:00.005-05:00

so here's the situation: i'm sitting downstairs, by myself, in a quiet house when everyone else is asleep. i'm at the computer (where i always am these days, trudging through work) and i begin to hear noises outside. i try to convince myself that it's just leaves rustling in the yard, and not some masked escaped convict prowling around the place, ready to murder me. i start to ponder strategies: do i scream? do i make a mad dash to the kitchen to grab a steak knife? are the steak knives in the drawer, or all still sitting in the unloaded dishwasher? would a paring knife be a better choice? or perhaps a pair of scissors that happen to be next to me at my desk ... or a nail file ... and then i begin to think back on the self-defense class i took in college to satisfy my p.e. requirement. i wonder where the white karate-like robe i had to buy for that class wound up, fifteen years later.

then i hear noises that are even closer, snap out of my reverie, and finally stand up and peek over the window that overlooks my desk. and there, directly on the other side of the window -- literally three feet away from me, with merely a brick wall separating us -- is the nastiest raccoon i've ever laid eyes on. and not only is he nasty, but he is FAT. and why is he fat? because he's perched in the middle of super's bowl, chowing down on the dog food she left behind after dinner, which i'm starting to realize has been going on for months now by the looks of his size XXL behind.

i'd like to say that i was brave and took care of the problem myself. instead, i somehow ran upstairs with my toes curled in my slippers, aroused my poor husband out of a deep sleep, and made him take care of the thing. which he did simply by flashing the porch light and rattling the door knob a few times. (my hero.)

but that vile creature didn't sprint off the porch. no, he just kind of casually glanced up at us, hauled his fat hiney out of the bowl, and sauntered out through the ripped screen on the porch door. (chris must have repaired that thing a dozen times, and always, within twenty-four hours it's back to being ripped again. we've been blaming super all this time. falsely accused AND robbed of her food to boot -- poor pooch.) i'm surprised the raccoon could squeeze his body through the slats after gorging himself on the iams, but he did, and then had the audacity to linger on the steps, obviously waiting for us to leave him alone so he could return to the scene of the crime and lick the bowl clean.

anyway, rather than focus on this disgusting chain of events, i'll choose to share pictures of our recent family outing to a pumpkin farm. you'll see that the farm has added tons of things to do, from slingshots to cornhole to zip lines to tractor rides. we had so much fun; so, you see? there are even more things that i like about halloween than just the steady supply of candy.

come to think of it, i better make sure there isn't any candy sitting on the back porch. with the dog food, the raccoon's a nuisance. but if that thing were to get into my butterfingers, well, i might just have to go buy myself a rifle and become the redneck woman i was born to be. no one messes with my the kids' chocolate.

corn maze

rolling around

liam hit the target with his very first try

ours went maybe two feet

zip line! that thing was fast

each "car" had a different name -- how fitting that the last one available was Susie Q (chris's nickname for susanna)

and, as they say, a good time was had by all

the H word

2011-11-01T01:23:00.007-04:00

"why don't we have decorations on OUR house for halloween?" i hear from the back seat, as we drive through the neighborhood with the kids (apparently) marveling at the yards and homes of people far more festive than i am.

"because, kids, i hate halloween."

"MOM!" comes the swift admonition of the profanity police. "you said the 'h' word!"

"you're right. sorry. i detest halloween."

and i'm not kidding. i really don't like halloween. i never have. i don't like the ghosts and the goblins and the witches and the vampires and the monsters and the other nasty things kids dress up as, which can be downright scary, even to a 36-year old. i don't like eerie music and fake fog and black cats and tombstones that litter people's yards in the attempt to, i don't know, get into the holiday spirit. and i will never understand why the same people who hire housecleaners to get rid of their cobwebs, then go out to a craft store and buy materials to PUT cobwebs on their bushes and front porches. (side note: i don't mind so much the pumpkins and haystacks and candy corn, so we do have a few decorations out. i'm not a total halloween scrooge -- although as soon as november 1st hits, they're boxed up and back in the attic.)

you know what else i ~~hate~~ strongly dislike? halloween costumes. this i can link directly to my childhood, with a mother who never really got into the whole halloween thing herself. i swear every year on the afternoon of october 31st, my younger sister and i would be racking our brains, trying to come up with something that could suffice as a costume. we'd go find mom, who would shrug her shoulders and suggest that we go down to the basement to see what we could find. inevitably we'd wind up trudging up the stairs holding the same rabbit costumes we had worn for the previous three years that were hand-me-downs from my dad's business partner's children. the final year i wore my rabbit costume it wouldn't button in the back and the legs ended shortly below my knees, and that's how i knew i had officially participated in my last trick-or-treating.

another thing i ~~hate~~ strongly dislike: halloween catalogs. my kids will spend hours poring over the costume section, oohing and aahing at every page. after declaring several different options his favorite, liam finally settled on wanting to be an Angry Bird this year. i took one look at the price tag of $49.99 and became an Angry Woman. (i did give in, somewhat, and bought a super mario costume at target for him. i've actually never spent a dime on a halloween costume -- he was a soccer player last year and a baseball player the year before, both with uniforms he already owned, and we've borrowed the rest -- so i'm figuring an average of $2.50/year isn't too bad. especially considering the fact that susanna was a carolina cheerleader, sporting the uniform she received as a christmas present last year. from, come to think of it, my parents. i suppose my mom has finally provided a halloween costume for someone.)

but none of this compares to how much i ~~hate~~ strongly dislike the kind of trick-or-treating we had last night. normally, trick-or-treating is one of the small highlights of the season for me; i actually enjoy canvassing our neighborhood and seeing all the children on the sidewalks and watching liam and susanna's eyes light up as their plastic pumpkins grow increasingly heavy with candy. but last night was not that kind of night. it was FREEZING. and it was POURING. within two minutes of leaving the house, we were soaked. i was dreaming of a hot bath and a glass of red wine before i'd even reached our mailbox.

at the end of the night, soaked to the bone -- but with smiles still on their faces. (mine was forced)

but the one good thing that came out of this dreadful day is sitting on my kitchen counter right now: the five pounds of candy the kids collected just by walking down two streets. each person who answered the door was so surprised/impressed/relieved to have trick-or-treaters that they wound up dumping their bowls into the kids' pumpkins. and i'm extremely pleased to report that their loot isn't full of the junk like now-and-laters and good-and-plentys and organic gummy bears that inevitably wind up in the trash in early december. this is five pounds of snickers and milky ways and twix and reeses, people! kit kats and M&Ms and almond joys, all of which just so happen to be in the house all day, with me, while everyone else is gone.

so maybe halloween isn't so bad after all.

flight of fancy

2011-10-26T00:52:00.003-04:00

when we caught wind of a Festival Day at a local regional airport a few weeks ago, our ears perked up. (anything that's free tends to have that effect on us.) it turned out that the family of one of my mom's friends owns a few planes that are housed at this airport, and they invited us for a private ride. how can you say no to that? especially when your daughter has never ridden in an airplane and has been hounding you for months about when she'll finally get the chance? we figured this could buy us a few more years before she really starts complaining.

so we drove the 45 minutes south to this teeny tiny airport and patiently waited for our turn to ride a teeny tiny plane, and in the meantime, toured ancient aircraft and had our faces painted and tried our hands at cornhole. when it was finally our turn, the kids eagerly clambered up the small set of steps and strapped themselves into a plush leather seat and craned their necks to see out windows that were just a tad higher than their heads.

i had to smile right before takeoff, when it struck me how totally laidback we were acting about this whole experience. in a world where we sign our lives away for something as simple as a field trip where the kids walk across the street, there we were, about to be launched into air, and we had signed nothing. there was no record anywhere of the mann family boarding this plane. what would happen if there were an accident? i didn't have any identification on me and even if chris did, it wouldn't even help us since surely his wallet would burn in the flames. i supposed that my mom knew what we were doing and if a plane crash in sanford made the local news, she might get around to calling around to see if we might have been involved. maybe.

some might say i was letting my imagination run wild. but you might understand my thought process when i explain that we must have sat on the runway for a good fifteen minutes before the plane was really even functioning. the pilot at one point turned around to us and said, "i'll just keep revving the engine until it turns over and sticks. this sort of thing happens whenever it's recently been in the air." and he'd give it some more gas, and it would sputter for a few seconds and die again. the kids didn't seem to notice, and chris and i would exchange glances and then just laugh. were we being laissez-faire? irresponsible? exceptionally trusting? all of the above?

but my reasoning was this: we're all together. i would have been freaking out if it were just two or three of us, leaving someone on the ground. but we were with each other, and if something horrible happened, i figured that the four of us would all be headed to those pearly gates hand-in-hand.

and if it takes such a risk to get a free airplane ride for the kids, well, that seems like a pretty reasonable tradeoff. don't you think?

fit to be tied

2011-10-24T01:02:00.001-04:00

we're nearing the end of the first quarter of school and liam came home with a checklist of skills that all first graders are supposed to have in order to be a Lacy Lion. (lacy is the name of our school. the lion is its mascot. but i suppose you already figured that out.)

so we sat down and checked them off. yes, he knows his full address. yes, he knows his phone number. of course, he can write his colors and his first and last name and his birth date. he was feeling pretty great, checking off each item as he worked around the sheet counter-clockwise. and then he got to the last one.

i can tie my shoes.

as i knew they would, the waterworks began. "i'm the only one in my whole class who can't tie my shoes!" he wailed. "i'll never be a lacy lion! i'm going to go to college and not know how to tie my shoes! i'm the horriblest shoe tie-er ever!"

(our son has a flair for the dramatic.)

but he's partially right. he very likely is the last person in his class to learn how to tie his shoes. we've tried -- believe me, we've tried -- but he's not even close. he's always struggled with fine motor skills (the poor boy only mastered using scissors in kindergarten) and chris and i decided we just weren't going to push it. each lesson with him ended in frustration, both on his part and ours, and we just chalked it up to something his body wasn't quite ready for and resolved to give it another shot in a month or two. in the meantime, our theory was this: there's always velcro.

but then this list came home, and we had no choice but to return to the challenge. since then, we've spent untold hours on the concept and i swear he's no better than he was when we began. we even borrowed this nifty book from a friend that has different colored laces, so he can more easily see what he's supposed to do (i.e., the red lace loops around the blue lace, etc). the book teaches the two most-common methods and goes through each step with words and pictures. we model it. we encourage him. we celebrate the few successes he's had. but he's just not getting it.

to add some levity to this post of frustration, i actually found myself giggling the other night amidst one of our shoe tying sessions. the bunny ear method (which happens to be chris's favorite) just wasn't working, so i showed him mine, which the book calls the rocketship method. as i went through the steps, i noticed that the lace formed an S. eager to find something that might serve as a visual reminder for him, i said, "an S for sara!"

"or an S for susanna!" susanna chimed in, as she was sitting next to us. (side note: susanna proudly came downstairs this morning with the shoe on the book tied. she has apparently taught herself.) (side note #2: we are NOT mentioning this to liam.)

super also was with us, as she always is. "or an S for super!" we exclaimed.

"or an S for shoe!" susanna added.

liam was bent over his laces at this point and glanced up at us with a look of disgust. "i know what that S is really for," he muttered. "Satan."

maybe not a thousand words, but certainly $22.00

2011-10-15T10:54:00.000-04:00

i expect my doorbell to be ringing any moment now. i envision a crew on the doorstep, much like those publisher's clearing house people, holding in their arms a big certificate with my name emblazoned on top. or maybe it will be a trophy? or a medal to hang around my neck, perhaps. but no matter the type, it will certainly say the following: Worst Mother of the Year, 2011. and yes, i realize that 2011 isn't even over yet. but i'm such a shoo-in for the winner that they certainly have ceased even accepting applications.

but i'm giving you the ending of the story before even explaining my transgressions. so let me back up and describe my evening last night.

five minutes after putting the kids to bed, i was downstairs and looked up to find liam standing next to me, crying. he started talking about something that was clearly so upsetting to him that i had trouble even understanding what he was saying ... something about kids and pictures. seeing him this way, i picked up his little pajama-clad body and held him in my lap, grateful that he still allows me to do this, while at the same time angry at whomever had caused him to be in this state that necessitated my comfort in the first place. i'm going to kill whoever did this to him, i resolved, my parenting defensive mode on high alert. no one can cause him this much pain and get away with it. so i asked him to take a deep breath, slow down, and tell me exactly what was wrong.

"well today at school all the kids in my class got their pictures that were taken at school a few weeks ago and i didn't and only like three others in my class didn't and i don't know why i didn't and they were all looking at them and i didn't have any and i don't think i'm going to be in the yearbook and --" before he dissolved into another round of heaving sobs.

i sat there, with my seven-year old boy curled in my lap, and i'm not sure i have ever felt worse as a parent. because the person who caused him to be in this state that necessitated my comfort was, in fact, ME.

it was such an easy thing to do: order a sheet of yearbook photos, write a check, send it in. but when the order forms came home, i scoffed at their prices -- the cheapest package was $22.00 for a sheet that probably costs 10 cents to produce -- and decided against it. i know that in a year or two, the kids will start trading yearbook pictures and coming home with a stack of all of their friends' with their names signed on the back, and i guess by then i'll have to bite the bullet. but i knew that from talking to other moms that in kindergarten and first grade the packages come home and are possibly shared with family and that's about it. for $22.00 i could take a picture and blow it up to poster size and ship it halfway around the world and still come out ahead. so the order forms went into the recycling bin and i never thought once about them.

until last night. i was struck at how insensitive i had been. i could immediately imagine how everything had unfolded -- i was a middle school teacher for a decade, you know -- how all the students were seated at their desks, and how liam's teacher held the stack of picture envelopes in her hands and called the kids up one by one. "oh claire! what a gorgeous smile!", she might say, as claire goes up to retrieve her pictures. "wow, david, you hadn't lost your tooth yet," she might say to another, before david eagerly opens up his envelope. and there liam sat, watching his classmates return to their seats, waiting and waiting for his name to be called. and then feeling a wave of disappointment, and confusion, when the last name was called and it wasn't his. all of this because his mother was too cheap to place an order.

i know that money can't buy happiness. and i certainly don't intend to indulge my children by buying their every wish and desire so that they can fit in, because obviously that's not healthy (and we'd probably go broke trying.) but if there's a $22.00 package of pictures to be ordered, which gives us not only a keepsake of him at this age but also supports the school in a fundraiser, and prevents him from feeling a sense of bewilderment as to why his mom's just about the only one who didn't want any pictures of her child ... well, i think i can manage that.

in the meantime, i wait for the doorbell to ring and for my award to be given. i probably should apply a bit more lipstick. because for a crime committed such as this -- oh, the irony -- they're going to want my photograph.

wordless wednesday: before and after

2011-10-12T00:38:00.003-04:00

i've been a bit obsessed about home renovation ever since we bought our house in 2008. i have a notebook bursting at the seams, stuffed with pictures i've cut out of magazines and newspaper articles, and my DVR has been chock-full of shows like "spice up my kitchen" and "bang for your buck". (incidentally, don't ever do a tv search for "bang" while a young reader is in your presence. if you catch my drift.)

my favorite pictures are the Befores and Afters. for a while there, i was beginning to think we'd always be stuck in Before mode. but no longer! we are finally officially Afters. (our original date of completion was to be july 24. we finished october 7.) here are some pictures to share.

before: this was most of our kitchen. mismatched appliances, including a dented dishwasher and a range that was tilted so i always had to rotate my pans while cooking or the oil would pool on one side. no real counterspace and cabinet doors that didn't fully close (or hung on one hinge).

after: taken from the same vantage point (so the range and hood are where the sink and window used to be)

before: our playroom (post-removal of a gazillion toys, natch.) the very first work that was done, way back on june 2, was the demolishing of this wall. the playroom moved upstairs and i have to say it's nice to have our main floor toy-free

after: our new breakfast room, taken from the same vantage point. this was the only square footage we added

after: the breakfast room opens up onto our screened porch. it's in dire need of some window treatments, but i dare not bring up the subject quite yet ...

before: our pepto bismol pink powder room (i wish this picture did its awfulness justice -- pink sink, pink toilet, pink wall tile, pink floor -- but i think i've mentioned this before)


after: our new mudroom / laundry room / office, taken from the same vantage point. the mirror used to hang right where that top white cabinet is. these built-ins were exactly what i had requested: a spot to hide all of our crap


after: built-ins for more crap. we finally have space to store our vacuum somewhere other than liam's closet -- novel concept

the only picture i don't have is our new powder room. i bought paint to striae the walls but haven't gotten around to it yet. if i continue at the same rate that it took us to get the rest of it done, it might be another three years.

we're finally an After. and hopefully we will live Happily Ever. :)

somnambulism

2011-10-08T00:21:00.004-04:00

ever wanted to know the scientific term for sleepwalking? it's somnambulism.

ever wondered why we know this? well, for the past month, we've been witnessing it. about once a night, always between the kids' bedtime and ours, we'll hear liam's door open, and the pitter-patter of his feet as he uses the bathroom. but after that, his journey becomes interesting. most often, he'll join chris in our room, wordlessly climbing into our bed. other times, he'll return to his room, but turn on his light and stand in the middle of the floor with his stuffed animals in his arms. he never says a thing; he just looks at us with a sort of blank face and quickly confuses us as much as he seems to be himself.

but a few nights this past week, he took a lengthier detour. twice he pounded down the stairs to find me at the computer (where i always am these evenings, catching up on work). he stood there, staring at me, not saying a word. this was the scene:

me: hey sweetheart. do you need something?

liam says nothing.

me: are you thirsty? did you come downstairs for some water, maybe?

liam slowly nods.

me: well, let's go into the kitchen and get you a cup.

liam immediately turns on his heel and walks to the kitchen. and then keeps walking to the breakfast room, where he sits down at his chair, puts his head on the table, and closes his eyes.

now, i'm sure you've concluded by now that he's sleepwalking. but admit it -- i kind of helped you get there with the title and vocabulary lesson. because, i'm embarrassed to say, it took us a full month to come to that conclusion ourselves. we just thought he was a little sleepy, maybe a little lonely, and sought us out for comfort. it dawned on us only recently that he is, in fact, sleepwalking. (and this was only because we realized that he never has any recollection of his escapades the next morning.)

once we arrived at our brilliant diagnosis, some internet research was conducted (of course). turns out 15% of children sleepwalk and grow out of it, but while they're doing it, there is no cure. the sites we read simply recommend making sure there are no dangerous objects in the child's path and that, if he's inclined to reach the front door of the house, that it's locked. done. i pointed out to chris (who is, for once, freaking out about something more than i am) that the most dangerous object in his path is the flight of stairs, and he seems to navigate that just fine. thank goodness.

still, we're putting a bell around his doorknob to alert us whenever he decides to venture forth. and on the nights we're gone, i've made our babysitter aware that it's very likely that around 9:30, she might look up to find a disheveled, very confused, half-asleep boy a few feet away from her. i suppose if it continues, we'll talk to our pediatrician, just to cover our bases.

but for now, we'll continue to fill him in the following morning of his antics the previous night -- which is always good for a giggle. and just add it to the ever-growing list of Slightly Crazy Things Our Children Do.

somnambulism. there's a vocabulary lesson for you. and you thought this blog was only for anecdotes about our family? you just never know what you're going to get when you come here.

motivation

2011-10-04T23:11:00.006-04:00

how easy it would be if we could figure out a one size fits all approach to parenting.   unfortunately, our children are a classic example of what-works-for-one-doesn't-necessarily-work-for-the-other. just when we think we've figured out the best way to motivate or discipline or teach a new skill, we'll try it with the other child and fail miserably. case in point: allowance.

liam has always been driven by reward. whether it's the promise of dessert if he tries another bite of asparagus, or five extra minutes on the wii if he finishes his weekly homework a day early, the dangling carrot trick is a surefire way of getting him to do what he otherwise might not want to do. i'm sure there are parenting gurus out there who would shake their heads and denounce our methods, but i know myself, and i know it works for me. a bigger paycheck if i take on another class? sure! a better chance of winning my next match if i hit against the ball machine for an hour? sign me up! and liam is pretty much the same. so every night, we go through his Responsibility Chart and assess whether he deserves his nickel for each of the seven tasks he's expected to do each day. (his jobs include getting the newspaper, feeding the dog, making his bed, brushing his teeth, putting his clothes in the hamper, cleaning his room, and choosing the next day's outfit before bed.)

things were going pretty well for a while. but then he started exhibiting yet another trait of mine: procrastination.  we would be going over his Responsibility Chart at 7:58 pm and he'd realize he never made his bed. immediately, he would jump up and start scurrying around like a man possessed, yanking up his covers and picking up his shams off the floor and throwing his stuffed animals into a pile on top. "there!" he'd say, breathless, at 7:59. "i get my nickel!"

so, slavedrivers that we are, we instituted a further requirement: the bed making had to be done before he went downstairs for breakfast, without prompting or reminding. and no, you can't just yank up the quilt on top and leave the sheets underneath in a crumpled mess -- have some pride in your work, boy! what do you know ... it's worked. mostly because our firstborn is driven by reward, but for whatever reason, he's never failed in completing this task. (and i have to say, there is quite a sense of satisfaction as a mother to peek my head into my son's room after dropping him off at school to see everything as it should be. when i need a good laugh, i like to delude myself and think that it is going to be this way until he leaves for college.)

so that's our liam. and then, in the other corner, we have susanna.

susanna doesn't seem to give one flying flip about rewards. if she's not into the green beans i'm serving for dinner, there is no dessert on this planet that could convince her to try them. if she hasn't done what she was supposed to in order to get some time on the pbs kids website, oh well.  there's always tomorrow. and her responsibility chart? (or, should i say Sponsibility Chart?) sure, she likes to arrange its magnets into colorful rows and count how many butterflies and hearts she sees, but the money aspect is of no interest to her whatsoever.

tonight, as we began our bedtime routine, i pointed out to her that she hadn't yet made her bed.  "why don't you go ahead and do it now?" i suggested. (we have yet to implement the before-breakfast rule with her ... we may be strict, but she's only five. we do have some compassion.)

"oh." she glanced over at her double bed, the pink quilt askew and her pillows on the floor, and shrugged her shoulders. "that's okay."

"but you won't get your magnet for that job today," i reminded her. "don't you want a nickel for your piggy bank?"

"um, i guess not," she replied, her eyes focused on her bookshelf.  "i'll just get one tomorrow if i do it then. besides, i'm about to get in bed anyway."

i have to admit -- i looked at her for a solid minute, watching her as she ran her fingers over the spines of her books to choose which one we would read. who is this child?   i asked myself. where did she come from?

the more i've thought about it, i've arrived at the conclusion that this could turn out one of two ways. she could turn out to be exactly the kind of person i wish i were -- driven by just an innate desire to be better just for better's sake; motivated by sheer will, and not by reward or potential outcome.  i already see this in her on a regular basis. just yesterday, she sat down and painstakingly wrote down the name of every child in her class, divided into columns of boys and girls. she spelled everything correctly after consulting her class roster, and made sure to capitalize where appropriate. and she did this not because she was required to, or because we suggested it, but just because she wanted to see if she could do it. the praise i lavished on her afterwards was just the icing on the cake; she was proud of her work because it was good. not because of what i said or because of some reward that was promised to her if she did it.

but ... who knows. maybe that's not what will happen.  maybe the money thing will never interest her and, in her ripe old age, she'll wind up with her older brother on speed dial, calling him up for loans.

as i mulled over her two possible distinct future paths, i heard liam from across the hall close his closet door.  "all right, mommy!" he yelled. "i'm done! i've got my outfit out for tomorrow so i get all seven nickels again tonight!"

at least he'll be able to support her.

turnover

2011-09-27T23:08:00.004-04:00

i volunteered at the kids' school yesterday afternoon up until when the final bell rang, and waited in the lobby for them to join me so that we could begin the mad dash that always makes up our mondays: maneuver the car out of the jam-packed parking lot, race home, help susanna and her friend maggie wriggle their bodies into leotards, feed all three kids snack, load up the car again (making sure liam has plenty to occupy him for an hour) and hightail it to gymnastics.

but it's funny how kids don't seem to sense urgency when you need them to. susanna came skipping down the kindergarten hall towards me, arms outstretched with a booklet of some sort, intent on sitting on my lap on the lobby couch as she showed me its contents. i reminded her of our time crunch and assured her that we would spend time that evening really looking at the pages and discussing them.

but i got a sneak peek while she was at gymnastics. turns out that she was yesterday's Student of the Day, where she gets to stand in front of the class and is asked the same set of questions every Student of the Day is asked: what is your name? who do you live with? what is your favorite color? what is your favorite thing to do? and then, after the interview is finished, everyone in the class creates a picture of the Student of the Day, showcasing some of what the student shared in his/her interview. the booklet that came home is a stapled set of all these drawings.

as i thumbed through the pages, i was fascinated for two reasons. for one, i'm constantly amazed at what a wide range of ability levels are housed in one kindergarten classroom. you see it with readers vs. non-readers, athletes vs. the less-coordinated set, musicians vs. those who are tone-deaf. and after flipping through the booklet, add one more area to the list: artistic ability. there were drawings that were spot-on perfect, down to the ruffled hem on susanna's skirt. and there were drawings where, as hard as i tried, i couldn't even make out where susanna's head was. people marvel at how i teach middle school ... i marvel at how kindergarten teachers possibly deal with a group of students whose levels are all over the map.

so that was the first fascinating piece. the other was what susanna was doing in most of the pictures. i've scanned a few of them and inserted them below. susanna's name is on the top, as the title, and the artist's name is visible at the bottom. do you see what struck me?

yes, susanna was wearing a green top and a polka dot skirt with an orange fringed hem. yes, she has dark blond hair and blue eyes. and yes, she loves to be outside. these budding artists perfectly captured all those aspects of our little girl. but there's one other thing that they all included -- even the last one, which is a bit harder to see. something that rocked me to my core.

she's PLAYING FOOTBALL.

i've written on this very blog about my hatred of the sport. i love watching basketball and tennis and will contentedly serve as spectator to baseball and soccer and golf and even bowling ... but anyone who knows me knows how much i absolutely detest football. so how is it possible that my doll-loving, princess-adoring, musical-singing prisspot daughter actually got in front of her class and, when asked what is her FAVORITE thing to do, opened her rosebud lips and uttered the phrase, "i like to play football with my older brother"?

i'm all for my children asserting their independence and stepping out on their own and developing their own likes and interests and hobbies. but seriously ... football?

it's like a line drive to my heart.

("line drive" is a football term, right? i'm trying to come up with a nifty pun but my utter lack of knowledge is causing me to fumble. probably something i need to tackle in the near future.)

memories ... light the corners of my mind

2011-09-19T09:29:00.001-04:00

(note: i totally had to look up the lyrics to "the way we were" for the title of this post and, as always, was surprised to learn i've been singing the wrong words all these years. chris would not be surprised.)

during dinner a few nights ago, we somehow started talking about the kids' first birthdays. if chris were here next to me he'd be able to remind me how we got on the subject; alas, he's not, so i'll sit here trying to remember how it all came about even though it's really not important. regardless, our children, like all children (and, really, all adults), love to hear about themselves when they were younger. they hang on my every word, even if it's not at all interesting. "and then, you would roll over on those chunky baby thighs and go to sleep," i could say, and their eyes would twinkle and they'd laugh and ask me to tell them more. "and you'd just sleep and sleep all night," i could continue, and they'd still be mesmerized, peppering me with questions.

so we were recounting liam's second birthday during our dinner the other night, describing who was there and where it was and what we ate. "he was wearing that blue and white checked outfit, right?" chris asked. and i didn't even have to think about it -- i knew he wore that outfit, not because of my stellar memory (which has already been discounted), but because we have pictures of it. and more than just pictures, we have scrapbook pages of it. i'd like to pat ourselves on the backs and marvel at how our minds are like steel traps even at the ripe old ages of 36*, but that's not the case. we remember it because we documented it.

it makes me wonder if we remember the Big Events of Our Lives because they were indeed Big ... or do we remember them because we have visual evidence that they occurred? tangible proof that we can hold in our hands and help us relive? pictures we can pass around as we reminisce, details on the glossy paper that trigger memories in our mind we would otherwise forget?

all of this was going through my mind that night at the dinner table. while i half-listened to chris describing to susanna what her first birthday cake looked like (which is prominently featured in her scrapbook spread of may 2007, natch) my mind was focusing on our blog, because i haven't posted nearly as often as i'd like as of late. despite having this newfound "freedom" afforded to mothers as they send their youngest off to kindergarten, i've been stretched much too thin with a new 40-hour a week work schedule that i'm somehow trying to squeeze into the 35 hours a week that they're in school, while also doing volunteer work and laundry and bible study and grocery shopping. i'll try to make a mental note of something to include in our blog, but by bedtime, i've stared at the computer screen for far too long that day already and collapse on the pillow without even pulling up our page. and i'm already kicking myself mentally on behalf of my future self, who won't have a page in the 2011 blog book to read to remind myself of exactly how susanna's first day of gymnastics went, or the kids' impromptu dance party i stumbled upon, or the hilarious-but-totally-awkward conversation we had on the way to school last week with our neighbor that somehow connected a barbecue restaurant with a dog and our nickname for girls' private parts. (well. on second thought, i might not have actually written about that. but trust me, it was funny.)

so. the house renovation is done (pictures coming soon), the school year is in full swing, and our lives are ~~back to normal~~ a new normal. the routine has returned, and hopefully, the blog has too. because if it doesn't, we may just have a difficult time remembering anything about 2011.

* i originally posted this stating our ages as 37. i just realized that we are both still 36. and now i'm starting to wonder seriously about alzheimer's.

wordless wednesday

2011-09-07T22:44:00.001-04:00

i seem to remember when i birthed my first child that there was a checklist of things i was required to do, simply because all mothers do them. somewhere between "jump around like a ninny when your child goes #2 on the potty" and "have your child's feet professionally fitted and realize he's been walking around in shoes two sizes too small" was the obligatory "take pictures of your child's first day of school and share them with the world". (this was in the days before facebook; certainly by now the checklist has been amended to "take pictures of your child's first day of school and post them on facebook along with the other 98% of your news feed who's doing the same thing".)

liam's first day was actually a few weeks ago, on august 25, but kindergarten always starts a full week later, so susanna didn't begin until september 1. both of them have had huge smiles on their faces ever since; they love their teachers and love their classrooms and love their classmates. it certainly makes drop-off easier for me, to have two kids who look forward to school and bound out of the car, eager to start their day. just as their momma, after 7+ years of being at home with them, is eager to start hers. :)

on liam's first day, with susanna along for the ride

standing next to his cubby, wearing a pristine new backpack that will assuredly look like a truck ran over it by day's end

some little sister supervision for his inaugural day desk work

daddy got to hold her hand ... and mommy got to hold her backpack

outside the school building. i just now realized that liam wore the same exact shirt on his first day and then a week later for susanna's first day. he's partial to the carolina blue, of course, but it does make things a bit confusing

"i really only need to know how to write five different letters in order to write my whole name," she very astutely pointed out

according to my sources, to this day, liam still walks susanna down to her classroom and even gives her a hug goodbye before turning around to head to the first grade hall

the highlight of her big first day? the bus ride home wins by a landslide

it's heaven ...

2011-08-31T23:16:00.004-04:00

... being SEVEN!

liam turned the big 0-7 (hmm -- that doesn't quite have the same ring to it as a double-digit age does) a few weeks back, and i've kind of dragged my heels on his annual birthday post because i've wanted to find just the perfect picture that i've taken from the last year that best encapsulates his personality. but i couldn't.

i've got tons of him playing sports, since he loves ALL things athletic.

after being a professional golf tournament spectator (and being handed signed balls and even a glove), he was more hooked than ever

and i've got tons of him with susanna, since he is really an amazing big brother and loves her so.

their first sleepover ever -- in liam's room. they giggled for a long while before finally drifting off to sleep

i've got tons of him being goofy, since he's got a great sense of humor. (i just wish i could somehow take a picture of the jokes he makes up, which can be surprisingly clever.)

i was surprised at just how many goofy pictures i had to choose from

i've got tons of him being serious, since he's focused and driven to the point that he tunes out everything around him if he's concentrating (even his parents talking to him.)

yes, that's the webster's dictionary he's reading at my parents' house, which he continued to do for a good half-hour

i've got tons of him playing the wii, his third favorite pastime behind sports and academics, like this one, taken on a fairly cold morning when we still had it outside hooked up to our tv on the back porch.

a wii bit chilly, i do believe

i've got tons of him from church activities, since he is growing in his faith everyday, asking insightful questions about God and Jesus and learning to love the Lord.

our fearless joseph in the 2010 christmas pageant -- a role he took quite seriously

but it's this one that melts my heart every time i see it. it's this one that shows his true personality: a kind, sensitive, thoughtful little person who adores school and learning and being around others. it's a letter he wrote to his new first grade teacher the evening of the first day of school -- unprompted; he did it just because he wanted to. (on the other side, he drew a picture of himself and mrs.turner, next to each other reading books.)

happy birthday to my most favorite boy on the whole planet. it's heaven being seven!

the scavengers

2011-08-26T01:51:00.006-04:00

all our beach trips this summer were super fun. all our camps were super fun. the vacation bible school weeks (yes, we did multiple ones), the library outings, the mountain excursion, the wildlife conservation center visit ... all super fun.

and then, all the super fun ended.

we returned from bald head to an empty calendar. and i mean E-M-P-T-Y. school began on august 25 (more on that later, natch) but we had a good eight days to fill. and a mother can only do so many hours at the pool before it starts to lose its luster.

luckily, i'm blessed (and believe me, i know it) with children who still love playing with each other. most days they'd entertain themselves for four or five hours, holding Critter School or playing Guess Who or building legoes or reading or playing soccer in the back yard. they'd come get me for snacks or lunch, but i was able to get a surprising amount of work done as we slowly but surely transitioned back into our home and i transitioned back into teaching mode.

but tuesday, after almost a week of self-entertaining, they hit a wall. for the first time all summer, i heard the dreaded, "we're booooooored, mommy. what do we do now?"

and thank goodness for stacey, my college friend who also writes a blog who happened to discuss that very morning a fun activity called a Make and Do Scavenger Hunt.

i hastily scribbled a list down on a torn-out sheet of paper, and posted it on the kitchen door. i don't remember all the items on the list, but whatever they were, the kids had a ball completing their tasks. here are some highlights:

creating a play-doh porcupine (notice the toothpicks as quills)

Snow White herself traced her feet -- without her princess slippers, of course

finding pinecones (they took it a step further and not only found them, but used about two entire rolls of tape to adhere them to paper and hang them in their rooms. of course, the tape gave out and i'm still picking up shards of dirty pinecone from the carpet, but i'd say it was worth it)

so the Make and Do Scavenger Hunt turned out to be super fun, just like most of the rest of the summer.

but you know what else is super fun? school starting.

wordless august: beach style

2011-08-19T01:14:00.005-04:00

i was ~~fixin' to~~ (sorry -- that's my north carolina roots talking) going to title this post my normal "wordless wednesday". but then i realized that it wasn't wednesday. and i've been pretty much wordless all month. so "wordless august" seems more appropriate ... have i mentioned that we're in the middle of a house renovation?

i'm finally getting around to uploading photos from our multiple trips to the beach this summer. we spent a week with my extended family for our annual reunion, another five days with our dear friends the basses (who might be in this blog as much as we are this summer), and just returned from bald head island, where we enjoyed another five days with chris's parents. not a bad way to spend your summer break, especially your alternative is a house with an inch of drywall dust on every surface. (i've discussed the renovation before, right?)

i am always so thankful that we are just a hop, skip, and jump away from our beautiful coast -- and our children, as you'll see, agree.

after years of watching me hunt for beach glass, susanna began a collection of her own

much like an old man, most afternoons liam would return to the beach showered and dressed, with a book in his hand. he pored over the "encyclopedia of sports" he received as an early birthday present. we are SO hoping that kids' Jeopardy has a sports theme when he's a contestant

susanna's on her way to china with the help of her great-uncle ron and cousin reilly

more digging with reilly, her partner-in-crime for the week

enjoying lunch on the deck with web and a camera-shy marshall

what's a beach trip without a putt-putt outing? and what made it even better was our new rule: NO SCORECARDS. because playing with liam, World's Sorest Loser, can drive a woman batty

in all my years of going to topsail, i had never seen anything like this: a giant tidal pool, about 25 feet wide. the sand bar (where liam and web are playing paddle ball) surfaced on our second day there and returned every morning. at its most pronounced, the kids could stand on the sand bar and jump down into the water as if they were on the edge of a pool. we probably spent three or four hours there every day, swimming and floating ... it was perfect

it's a hard life

a feast of tuna steaks and scallops -- and our seafood loving children devoured every bite

bald head is full of photo ops, from the golf cart riding to the lighthouse to the ferry ... and the only shot i took was one with popsicles. (although, i must say, if any popsicle deserves such attention, it's lunapops' sea salt caramel flavor. i thought i'd died and gone to heaven.)

you know your renovation has been going on too long when ...

2011-08-10T10:15:00.001-04:00

words like "crown molding", "built-ins", and "flush mount lighting" are part of your five- and six- year old children's vernacular.
you hold real silverware in someone else's home and it feels foreign.
you're grateful for that spanish degree you earned in college. especially useful is the phrase "estoy buscando mis ..." which means, "i'm looking for my ..." (fill in the blank -- keys, purse, shoes, sanity. our painters have been quite helpful in locating at least the first three items.)
your children build all their lego houses to include an attached dumpster.
the aroma wafting out of the port-a-potty in your front yard isn't remotely pleasant ... but you don't even notice it.
your children actually whine about having to go out to dinner. "please, mommy? can't you please cook tonight?" (sorry, sweetheart. cooking is not an option without a functioning oven or range.)
on top of your bathroom counter is handsoap, toothbrushes, and a carton of strawberries to be rinsed.
when asked what they've been doing this summer, your children do not respond with "we've been to the beach!" or "we've gone to the mountains!" or "we've been swimming and doing fun camps!" instead, their immediate reply is, "our house is being renovated."

and that pretty much sums up our lives at the moment. but the end is in sight. the end is in sight. the end IS IN SIGHT.

out of order

2011-07-31T01:24:00.003-04:00

i try to maintain some semblance of order at our house. i might not be the world's best housecleaner (in fact, aside from vacuuming, i'm pretty much terrible at all of it) but i do manage to keep our home relatively tidy. i cannot stand clutter -- the kitchen counter might be sticky with a few crumbs underneath the toaster oven, but i at least make sure there's not piles of crap sitting on top of it that belong elsewhere.

i have vowed to myself that once our renovation is complete, that it will turn a new page in my life's book and i will become a regular merry maid who mops the floors, scrubs the showers, and dusts the lampshades on a very regular basis. this renovation is also going to turn me into an early riser who exercises at 6:00 a.m. and who does not procrastinate work assignments and who runs on time, if not early. it is AMAZING what this renovation is going to accomplish in my life! i'm calling it my Miraculous Life Makeover. just you wait and see.

but this renovation -- the same one that's going to effect radical change for the better in me -- is, in the meantime, wreaking havoc on the one thing i actually do right. because there is no order in our family life at the moment. our dog has been at my doting in-laws' for the entire summer. half of the kids' toys and books and clothes are in my parents' basement. we've also got stuff stashed in their guest room, at the beach house, and in the back of the car. in short, if there's something we need, there are about seven different places where it might be ... and it's always in the last place we look. (funny how that works.)

so i've had no choice to to embrace disorder. i've learned to turn a blind eye to things not in their proper place -- because, for this moment in time, usually it has no proper place. i shrug it off, reminding myself that this phase is only temporary, and once we are finally back in our house, i can spend a full day restoring my beloved order (and sanity) into my life.

never before has this been so obvious as it was this afternoon. we're at topsail, where we have spent the majority of july, and have somewhat of a routine to our days. we spend three or four hours on the beach, and when we're finally starving and have exhausted our snack supply, we return to the house to clean up. i always stand in the outside shower in my swimsuit and help the kids, and then send them upstairs to get dressed while i shower myself. by the time i join them, they're always sitting at the kitchen table, dressed and eagerly awaiting lunch. i've gotten to the point that i look forward to seeing the concoction of clothing they both will have selected without me. liam's usually in some totally mismatched outfit (today's pairing was a yellow striped shirt with blue and red plaid shorts) and susanna, for the past four days straight, has been in her purple flowered dress.

i haven't bothered either one of them about their choices, because, well, it's summer and i really don't give a flip if my son looks like he's colorblind or if my daughter's stuck on repeat. but i did finally ask susanna why she was so smitten with her purple flowered dress. was it the pockets? is it super comfortable? does it have extra twirling power?

"well, it's just that it's the first one i see," she explained, "since it's always on the floor near the door."

aaah, the whole disorder thing. a crumpled dress on the floor -- sounds perfectly reasonable. i would've probably realized this, had i ventured up to the second floor to look in their rooms. when i finally did this tonight to gather up their dirty laundry, i couldn't find any of liam's underwear. so i asked my second question of the evening regarding their attire. "liam, where are all of your dirty boxers?"

"hmm," he thought aloud. "i don't know if i have any underwear besides the ones i have on." i immediately felt the need to clarify exactly what he was telling me, so i asked him if he's really been wearing the same pair during this whole long weekend. "oh no, not whole long weekend!" he assured me. whew. "i mean, i don't wear underwear out on the beach, silly!"

the end of our renovation -- and my Miraculous Life Makeover -- could not come soon enough. until then, you must forgive me as i'm sidestepping piles of clothes on the floor and searching frantically for lost library books. and if i allow my son to go commando from time to time while the wash is being run, well, i hope you understand that the mann house is temporarily out. of. order.

acronyms

2011-07-25T01:41:00.004-04:00

my favorite acronym story comes from a friend of mine, whose mother was apparently having trouble keeping up with the current vernacular and had somehow had come to believe that "LOL" stood for Lots of Love. unfortunately, he didn't know that was her misconception; he just found it disturbing when he opened up his email one morning to find the following message from her: "hey honey. your great-uncle passed away last night. LOL."

we've been LOL-ing recently at liam, who has become quite attuned to the acronyms all around him. he's mastered most of the sports ones like RBI and TD and ESPN, and also took a liking to ASAP. but it was last week at the beach, with 20+ of my relatives for our annual family vacation, when he really latched onto one. after hearing a few of my cousins talking, he turned to me with a quizzical look on his face. "what does 'FYI' mean?" he asked me. "i keep hearing everyone say it." when i explained it to him, a smile spread across his face. "cool! i'm going to start using that too ... FYI."

nine days later, and there's no sign of him stopping. "i brushed my teeth this morning FYI," he'll announce. or, "FYI the ocean is salty," he'll state, to no one in particular. or, "i like to eat oatmeal for breakfast FYI," even though no one has asked. i'm sure it's just one more way he can feel older, more mature, more worldly. (and if it's not immediately obvious how much older, simply wait a few moments. "i'm six-and-eleven-twelfths FYI," he'll inform you.)

but i'm not complaining. we'll ride this FYI train as long as it will have us. i'm afraid the WTF station is awaiting us in the not-so-distant future, and once we're there, there ain't going to be much LOL-ing to be found.

wordless wednesday: mountain style

2011-07-13T22:42:00.001-04:00

i discovered that my super duper iphone4 has a better lens on it than my 3-year old digital camera. which was great news to learn, since it's with me at all times and i now can snap fairly impressive (at least for me, anyway) photos at a moment's notice without lamenting that my aforementioned canon is in the car with a dead battery.

this came in handy while we spent six glorious days in the north carolina mountains with our dear friends the basses over the 4th of july weekend. we hiked, biked, ran, built a campfire, roasted marshmallows and made s'mores, set off our very own fireworks that were purchased in our neighboring state south carolina (which apparently does not care as much about the safety of its residents as our restrictive tarheel state), went gem mining, cheered on the sidelines of two parades, went tubing down the river, sat on the back porch and witnessed the most glorious thunderstorms roll in, and did lots of other things that i'm probably forgetting but will remember as soon as i upload my pictures. because i have my camera with me at all times, you see, because it's actually my phone. a modern-day marvel, i tell ya.

armed with the map, our fearless leader susanna blazed the trail on our hike

there were actually nine of us on our hike -- marshall found a worm friend who hitched a ride on his cowboy hat

we found a beautiful gazebo for a picnic lunch, and made sure to reserve our sandwich crusts for the ducks

we stationed ourselves at the very end of the parade route in blowing rock. to pass the time while we waited, a rousing game of duck-duck-goose was in order

seems the mountain air was a bit too chilly for the slip-and-slide for susanna. on a completely different note, please take this opportunity to marvel at the clarity of this picture (notice those water droplets!) and remind yourself that these were all taken by a phone

susanna and marshall were inseparable. they'd walk out the front door and we'd find them hours later, pretending they were on a "journey" with pretend backpacks and a treasure map, or with long sticks for light sabers as they played star wars

we enjoyed our very own fireworks show every night, courtesy of bill and his pyrotechnic talents. he was kind to allow liam to help him set one off

this is liam holding a sparkler BEFORE he decided to bring it close to his face to see if he could "feel its warmth"

visiting our old friend petunia the pot-bellied pig

waiting for the second parade of the weekend -- the "liberty parade" in todd -- otherwise known as the liberal parade

see what i mean?

the kids enjoyed a cold drink following the parade. of particular note is liam's chin wound ... remember how our academically-gifted child held a sparkler to his face?

a rare photo of the four adults, taken by liam

hanging out with a friendly man in boone, after a trip to the candy barrel at mast general store, of course

while we mined for gems, liam found this rock, convinced it was a diamond

sadly, it was not a diamond ... BUT when the kids learned about the rocks they'd mined, he learned that he found the only sapphire they'd seen that day! i'm still figuring out what i want to do with it

enjoying our umpteenth packed picnic of the weekend on our way home, using an outside table at hardee's where we bought nothing (but used their nasty restroom)

i'm still kind of amazed we fit six people and all of our luggage into our SUV ... of course, we did have to wedge a big bag of trash in between marshall and susanna until we found a dumpster, but they didn't seem to mind

and a good time, as they say, was had by all.

RESTroom: a definition

2011-07-08T09:52:00.005-04:00

public restrooms gross me out. i avoid them at all costs, and when i do have to use them, i'm one of those weird OCD people who uses a paper towel to open the door upon exiting because you just never know what person before you did not wash their hands and therefore left their nasty germs all over the door handle. in fact, i'm so weird about public restrooms that i went all four years of high school without ever setting foot into one.

so God really decided to have a chuckle when he gave me a girl. because when you have a five-year old daughter on a long road trip, it's just about impossible to avoid public restrooms.

i try my hardest to hold my nose and to ignore the sights of the restrooms in the fast food restaurants or rest areas that we inevitably have to visit every time we're on the highway for more than two hours, since i certainly don't want to pass along my issues to my daughter. i keep my admonitions to a minimum as i watch her clamber up the nasty toilet seat and fidget to get in a comfortable position, cringing inwardly as i try to convince myself that if we scrub her hands super well then she might just survive.

yesterday, we drove back from our week in the mountains with my dear friend lainey and her two boys. chris had returned home a few days prior (what a pain that thing called work can be!), so when susanna needed to use the bathroom at the hardee's where we'd stopped to use their outdoor picnic tables to eat our PB&Js, liam had to tag along.

i stepped gingerly over a stagnant puddle in the middle of the floor, not allowing myself to even consider what liquid it might be, and shepherded my two charges into the handicapped stall. handicapped stalls are great because of the extra room; they're not so great because the toilets are higher off the ground, necessitating even more climbing than usual. liam went first, with minimal contact -- i watched in admiration as he actually avoided touching the thing with any part of his body. he's even mastered the art of flushing with his foot ... what a proud day that was for me! but as soon as he finished, it was susanna's turn. and it was there that susanna sat, bazillions of invisible germs surely swarming her soft clean skin, with a thoughtful look on her face.

"i know why boys stand when they go pee-pee, but girls sit," she informed us.

i glanced at liam, wondering how much of a secret lesson in anatomy he might have given his younger sister, as we had just recently discussed this very issue. but he seemed quite interested in her answer, so, with a little trepidation, i asked her to explain.

"it's because we girls like to think about things a lot, so if we want to take a little rest while we go pee-pee, we can. if i was standing, i really wouldn't want to relax, but since i'm sitting, i can! isn't that great?"

yes, sweetheart. it's great. you go ahead and take your sweet time on the hardee's toilet, soaking in the atmosphere while i stare down at the gunk at the base of the sink, my toes curling in my shoes. just don't forget to use a paper towel on the door handle on your way out.

the mogul

2011-06-28T16:53:00.005-04:00

when i picked up liam from a playdate at his friend henry's house last week, i found them sprawled on the floor, immersed in a rousing game of monopoly. liam had never played it before, but i could tell by the look on his face that he was hooked. as is the case whenever a six-year old teaches another six-year old a new game, the rules were a little nebulous; they were having fun putting houses wherever they wished and doling out cash whenever they needed more. but the gleam in liam's eye told me that this was something he could really get into.

we're now living with my parents until our renovation is complete, and i felt sure that they'd kept our most beloved games in their game closet downstairs. sure enough, as soon as i opened the door, i saw our tried-and-true monopoly set from my childhood staring back at me. the properties were miraculously all there, the pieces were all intact, and the board was just itching to be opened for likely the first time in over a decade.

chris patiently explained the nuances of the game -- how to buy railroads, how to collect $200 as your salary, how to build hotels. soon the inevitable questions followed: "what is a luxury tax?", "what is a mort-gage?" and "what is a monopoly, anyway?" as a lover of math, liam has particularly enjoyed all the number crunching involved. he can quickly calculate the change he's due from the bank and has even mastered the art of how to determine 10% of his assets when he lands on the dreaded income tax spot.

but the one thing he hasn't mastered -- which plagues him in all other games, sports, and competitive endeavors -- is the fine art of losing. above is a picture when all was right and good in monopoly world, as we embarked on a fun game while a summer thunderstorm forced us indoors. and below is what ensued as his cash pile dwindled and a loss to chris loomed.

i'm brainstorming here ... i think our monopoly set will soon have one additional card thrown into the "chance" and "community chest" mix. "OBNOXIOUS CHILD PITCHES FIT. GO STRAIGHT TO JAIL. DO NOT PASS GO. AND DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT COLLECTING $200."

out with the old, in with the new

2011-06-18T22:54:00.002-04:00

chris texted me the following picture, with the phrase "i miss it already" attached:

yep, our old pepto bismol pink toilet and pepto bismol pink pedestal sink are currently hanging out in the woods next to our driveway. i guess when you have a porta-potty in your front yard, there's really nowhere to go but up. (our neighbors must love us.)

but on a positive note, we are officially underway with the renovation. i keep likening the demolition phase, which is what took place this week, to christmas. every year on christmas morning, i'm struck with how quickly everything gets undone. i mean, that pile of presents underneath the tree takes months and months of planning, researching, comparing prices, shopping, paying, wrapping ... and literally, in five minutes, it's all over. (of course, your hope is that whatever was in the boxes provides thousands of hours of entertainment and joy to the recipients, so it's not really all over ... but you know what i'm saying.) and that's what i've been thinking about as i've witnessed the tear-down of our kitchen, playroom, laundry area, and powder room. it took months to build back in 1971, and it's taken us many hours to make it liveable for the past three years, with installing hardwoods and painting and rearranging. and then, in a mere two days, it's all gone. BAM. there go the walls. BAM. there go the sinks. BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM. there goes one pink ceramic tile out of 512. BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM. there goes the second pink ceramic tile out of 512. (who knew ceramic tile was such a pain to remove? perhaps the fact that it was installed over olive green linoleum slowed down the process a bit?)

as an extremely visual person, i'm loving this phase. i can finally see exactly what the space is going to be. i can envision what's going where, what the flow will be like, and how truly different it's going to look. i let the kids walk around the area with me so they could see exactly what was being done. i don't think they really quite understand the transformation yet, but they still thought the process is pretty interesting.

in the meantime, we've been trying to fill our days with activities that don't involve being at home. we've been bowling with friends ...

enjoying treasure box treats after a great visit with the dentist ...

and playing with my new white iPhone4, which is a very overdue replacement to my two-year old, shattered-screen, slow-as-molasses ancient black iPhoneNegative3. here's a self-picture susanna took with it:

you know what they say -- "out with the old [pepto bismol pink toilet], and in with the new [smartphone extraordinaire]." a pretty fun tradeoff, i do say.

the dichotomy

2011-06-10T16:24:00.000-04:00

the end of the school year has always been bittersweet for me. from the time i was in preschool, i wrestled with my emotions on the last day -- excited for the upcoming summer with beach vacations and pool trips and camps, but sad to hug my teachers goodbye. the dichotomy persisted during my teaching career; i couldn't wait for the opportunity to sleep past 5:30 a.m. and read novels instead of educational periodicals, but at the same time i dreaded saying goodbye to my eighth graders as they left our middle school for the last time. and now, as a parent, it hits me again.

today i felt the inevitable twinge of nostalgia wash over me, as i always do when the kids reach milestones, whether it's their first lost tooth or their first haircut or their last diaper or preschool graduation. it hits me how their lives are moving at warp speed ... i swear just five minutes ago, liam was gripping my hand tightly as we navigated the wide halls of his new elementary school, wide-eyed as he looked up to the fifth graders passing by him. and now, nine months later, he's bounding off the bus as a confident, savvy, far-more-independent rising first grader.

among the 1,500 work samples and book reports and pieces of art that came home crammed into his backpack was a project of what he'd like to be when he grows up. and in the words that he wrote is yet another dichotomy: a stellar athlete who, at the same time, loves all things academic. a boy who heads outside the first chance he gets to kick the soccer ball and shoot hoops and play tennis in the cul-de-sac, who will also sit in the back seat of the car and multiply fractions and divide decimals and add negative integers in his head for fun.

i look forward to seeing just who he becomes, whether it's a baseball player or an accountant or something in between. and yet, at the same time, i want to keep him just like this forever. i guess the push and pull, the joy and the sorrow, the triumphs and the challenges -- that dichotomy is what makes parenting the wild ride that it is.

Liam Mann, Future Baseball Player and Accountant

My future's so bright, I've gotta wear shades!

First I want to play baseball for the Los Angeles Dodgers. I want to play CF (Center Field). I want my jersey number to be 34. After that, I want to be a number accountant. I want to make a Roman numeral for zero! The End!

not quite picture perfect

2011-06-05T23:35:00.000-04:00

the transformation from guest room to playroom is now complete. the walls are painted a sunny yellow, the valance has been shortened and installed, the beds and dresser are out, and the basketball goal and pretend kitchen and air hockey table and dollhouse are in. (we work hard to ensure that our house is fully bi-partisan in terms of boy and girl toys.) we didn't gain any square footage in the transition, but we did gain extra wall space, which has proved a bit of a challenge. each child has their own big corkboard, filled with party invitations and sketches and nametags and stickers, on their own wall of this new playroom, and the third wall has some framed professional art. but the fourth wall -- the one that faces you as you enter the room -- is bare.

and then i had a brilliant idea. in the move, i came across two adorable self-portraits the kids made while in their four-year old classes in preschool. they were roughly the same size with complementary colors, and were just so quintessentially them -- in other words, they were perfect for the blank wall. i bought a couple of big frames at a local art supply store and came home on sunday afternoon so excited to get started. "look at what i'm going to do with your beautiful artwork!" i shared with the kids, ushering them into the kitchen where i had set up shop. "i'm going to frame the portraits you painted of yourselves and hang them side-by-side in the playroom! isn't that awesome?"

silence. they just stared at me, with confused looks on their faces, as if i were speaking some foreign language.

so i explained further. "see, i'm going to take this painting of susanna, and put this pretty mat behind it, and put it in this white frame. and then i'll do the same thing with liam's. and everyone who walks into the playroom will see them and will be amazed at what great artists you are!"

but no clapping or praise or even thumbs up followed. instead, they informed me, at the same time, that the self-portraits i held in my hand were actually not self-portraits at all. "those are paintings of YOU, mommy," they said. "we made them for mother's day. remember?"

oh. right.

a good mother would have apologized for her mistake, thanked them again profusely for their wonderful gifts, and moved on. but i just couldn't let it go. i mean, my idea was so perfect! and those paintings really could be of the kids themselves -- susanna looks just like me, and liam's was abstract enough that it could easily be a painting of him. (isn't that what you thought when you saw the picture at the beginning of the post?) so i told him as much.

"oh don't be silly, mommy," he replied, hardly even giving such a preposterous idea a second thought. "those are bracelets on your arm -- see? i don't wear bracelets. so it's definitely not me."

shot down, by my two budding artists. but i just refuse to give it up. so i'm thinking ... maybe if i just frame and hang them anyway, people can arrive at their own conclusions, and maybe will just assume that they are adorable self-renderings by two four-year old blond-haired, blue-eyed children. the fact that their mother also has blond hair and blue eyes is just a mere coincidence, right?

right?

shedding no tears

2011-06-01T23:15:00.005-04:00

our big kitchen renovation officially begins tomorrow, when the demolition crew shows up at 8:30 a.m. and starts knocking out walls and throwing all the waste into a dumpster in our driveway. but really, the actual process began months ago, when chris and i came to the conclusion that this wasn't simply a kitchen renovation. yes, the main focus is the kitchen; we will finally be rid of our nasty white-on-the-outside-lime-green-on-the-inside cabinets, which never close properly and recently have begun falling off their hinges. we will be saying goodbye to the peachy-colored tile floor in the breakfast area, and the smaller, slightly more peachy-colored tile floor in the laundry area that someone, at some point, decided looked good right next to each other.   we will be tossing out an old chandelier that isn't wired correctly, a microwave that makes a weird humming noise every time you use it, and a set of mismatched appliances (white fridge, beige oven, black dishwasher) that have all seen better days. i will finally have COUNTER SPACE ... a foreign concept, after surviving almost three years with such little work area that i often find myself placing a cutting board on top of the range to chop up veggies, simply because there's nowhere else to put it. the finished product, after a very intense summer that will require us to move out for a month or so, will be a kitchen that is much larger than our current one with a great big island, a wine fridge, a double oven, and lots and lots of much-needed storage.

but, as they say in infomercials, that's not all! because along with our revamped kitchen will come a new powder room in a different location, meaning that we will finally bid a fond farewell to pepto bismol pink. (our current powder room has a pepto bismol pink toilet, pepto bismol pink pedestal sink, pepto bismol pink tile wall, and pepto bismol pink tile floor. just what was happening on the home decor front in the 1970s, anyway?)

and lastly, we will get a new mud room, complete with a high-efficiency washer and dryer, a desk/work station, and cubbies and baskets to house our gazillion pairs of shoes and boots and raincoats and jackets and umbrellas and backpacks and lunchbags and briefcases. i actually think i'm more excited about my our new mud room than i am about my our new kitchen.

but what chris and i realized, about a month ago, is what an enormous domino effect this project is turning out to be. there is hardly a room in our house that will not be affected by this renovation. our future kitchen will take over our entire exisiting playroom and existing storage room. obviously, we still need a playroom and a storage room, so we had no choice but to move the playroom up to our existing guest room. the contents of our existing guest room were divvied up among goodwill, a garage sale, and my parents' basement. and to fill the void of our soon-to-be-history storage room, this past weekend we had a shed built on the back corner of our property.

which brings me to the subject matter of this post. last night, i'd returned home late from tutoring and was cleaning the kitchen while chris toiled away in the backyard with a flashlight, making countless trips from one side of the yard to the other, his arms laden with tools, bikes, outside toys, gardening supplies, and all the other miscellaneous crap we throw in the storage room because we don't know where else to put it. as i was loading the last of the cups into my dented black dishwasher with the unreliable detergent dispenser, my phone rang, with chris's name coming up on the caller ID.

"hey!" i said. "did you not want to walk the few extra steps into the house to talk to me?"

no laughter. instead, a sigh. and then, "i'm in the shed. i can't get out."

i began to process what he was saying.  there he was, at 10:00 at night, surrounded by darkness in the sweltering north carolina summer heat ... locked inside our new shed. naturally, i began to laugh.

and naturally, he found nothing amusing about his predicament. "sara. sara. SARA! stop laughing! will you just please come out here and open the door?"

for the umpteenth time, i thanked God for the invention of cell phones. and i thanked God for men's athletic shorts, which, unlike my athletic shorts, have pockets, in which chris happened to place his cell phone. for had he not had it on him, i honestly don't know how long it might have taken me to realize he was stuck inside our unlit, poorly-ventilated shed in 95-degree heat.  a half-hour? an hour? might i have just gone to bed, assuming he'd come inside when he was ready? fortunately, i'll never know.

and this, my friends, is how a truly rambling post is written. start off with a description of your kitchen remodel, and wind up with an image of your spouse trapped in a ten-by-twelve foot building outside in the pitch dark. how, might you ask, do you wrap up such a rambling post? i think a pun is the perfect solution.

so let's just say that i hope this post happens to shed some light on what's been going on around here lately.

(groan)

not-so-humble pie

2011-05-27T13:38:00.000-04:00

we waited too late to start a homework assignment. it was sunday evening, we had just finished dinner, and it occurred to me that liam had a book report due. i use the term "book report" loosely; it's really just an open-ended prompt like, "tell me about your favorite part" that he can answer in a few as a couple sentences.

but Lord have mercy, those couple sentences can take HOURS when it's liam at the culmination of a tiring weekend when the last thing he wants to be doing is gripping a pencil in his hand and forming letters to spell words that answer a question about a book he barely remembers. (note to self: we simply must be more prompt with his book reports.)

as is his tendency, the second things started going wrong -- he forgot to capitalize a letter, or smudged the paper while erasing -- he decided to throw himself a pity party. "i can't dooooooo this!" he wailed. "i am so horrible at book reports!"

"come on, liam, you know that's not true," i said to him, barely even glancing his way while cleaning up the kitchen, as i've heard this all before. "you're great at book reports, just like you're great at everything you put your mind to."

"ButMommy, i'm not great at everything," he replied, because that's where we are these days: smack dab in the middle of Retortville. you can't say anything to liam without a response flying right back, whether you requested one or not. as i prepared myself to redirect him away from this inane argument and back to the subject at hand, he continued.

"for example, i'm not good at asian languages. and you KNOW i've put my mind to that. the only word i even know is tock-yo."

i opened my mouth to show him how to correctly pronounce "tokyo", and then thought better of it. better to end the conversation at that moment than drag it out for another half hour.

but he's right, you know. he really isn't great at everything. even asian languages.

one, two, three, four, FIVE!

2011-05-24T10:52:00.005-04:00

this is the song we sang in preschool chapel last wednesday:

susanna is five! susanna is five!
happy birthday, susanna is five!
clap your hands, clap your hands,
happy birthday, susanna is five!
one, two, three, four, FIVE!

it's funny how my emotions hit me at the most unexpected times. sitting in the back of chapel that morning, watching susanna process in holding the church flag as she beamed from ear to ear with pride, i just beamed back. i shared in her excitement, knowing how she'd waited all year long for this moment. you'd think that i might have become teary, especially since i realized that this was the final preschool birthday celebration the mann family would ever be a part of.

but it wasn't until later that afternoon that my emotions surfaced. and it wasn't at church, or home, or some other special place. it was at the nail salon.

on a whim, i had picked her up at preschool and decided to take her out for mommy/daughter pedicure. this is something i hardly ever do for myself, and had never done with her. but it was a special occasion, and knowing my girly girl so well, i knew she'd love it.

we began by perusing the nail polish selection. so many choices, from deep purples to shimmery golds. but my decisive daughter immediately honed in on a cotton candy pink (is it any surprise?) and brought the little vial to the nail technician, while clambering up into the massaging chair. i sat in my own chair beside her, and we shared a smile as we soaked our feet into the warm bubbles in the basins below.

other women were nearby, all reading books or flipping through magazines or chatting on their cell phones. but i needed no entertainment. instead, i looked over at my daughter, proudly wearing a birthday pin and informing anyone within earshot that she was turning a whole hand that day, and marveled at the person she has become.

how do i sum up our youngest child?

she is ultra-feminine: a lover of all things princess, all things pink, all things frilly and flowery and beautiful.

for some strange reason,
she loved my gold sequined
prom dress unearthed from the attic

she is artistic. both in the obvious sense, when we marvel at the projects she brings home from school with such color and attention to detail; but also in the less-expected sense, when we marvel at her freehand sketches that we recognize instantly, or her inventive arrangement of furniture and accessories in her dollhouse, or her spot-on choices of hairbows or jewelry that perfectly accompany her outfits.

she is musical. she can hum a tune after hearing it only once, and has a knack for determining voices even with unfamiliar songs. "this sounds like michael jackson," she'll state. or, "i think this must be the beatles." she carries around her personal mp3 player (pink, of course) all over the house, rocking out to tunes that her daddy loads, who knows how she appreciates the classics. and her favorite movie? hands-down, "the sound of music." she knows every song by heart.

she is shockingly helpful. ask her to clean up her mess once, and within ten minutes she'll call you back to show off a pristine room with everything in its place. if she sees me get out the broom, she immediately offers to sweep the porch or the deck or even, a little less successfully, the driveway. if i'm cooking, i know she will soon appear by my side with her little red apron in hand, eager to stir or measure or pour.

she is a lover of family. she adores her brother just as she always has, but it's been interesting to watch their dynamic change in this past year. no longer his disciple, she's become his partner, suggesting things to do and certainly holding her own. she has a special relationship with each of her four grandparents, always requesting to spend time with them. and chris -- well, there's just nothing like a father/daughter bond.

she's still a little shy, taking time to warm-up to new situations and people ... but once she's comfortable, she's as happy as she can be. she's apparently a very good friend, since she has a busier social calendar than the rest of our family combined.

celebrating her birthday dinner
at red robin with liam
and her best friend polly

all of this filled my mind as i sat in my chair in the nail salon, sneaking glances at my daughter a few feet away from me, who was intently watching as a little white flower was painted on her toes. tears sprang to my eyes as my mind traveled back to the delivery room five years ago -- as it always does on my children's birthdays -- realizing what a real person she is now. and i thought of so many more ways to describe her: strong-willed ... a sleepyhead ... creative ... a ballerina ... a star wars fan ... motherly ... a cuddler ... a master puzzle solver.

but most of all, she's ours. she's our amazing, wonderful,perfect susanna. and she's five!

on the contrary

2011-05-20T17:13:00.003-04:00

sesame street, back in the days when we watched it, always had a vocabulary lesson to kick off the show. they called it "the word on the street" and murray monster (relatively new to the scene, in case it's been a while since you've tuned in) would explain what it meant. and then it would pop up several times during the hour-long episode, almost always featuring a cameo by a celebrity. colin farrell introduced "investigate". wanda sykes took on "journal". jason bateman talked about "comfort".

the word on the street in the mann house right now is actually a phrase, but the words are always said together and always so quickly that it tumbles out of the mouth as one. the word is ButMommy. "ButMommy" precedes just about every single thing that comes out of liam's mouth. it needs no definition, but here are a few examples:

me: "liam, we're about to get in the car, so you go ahead and put on your shoes."
liam: "ButMommy --"

me: "liam, please put your tennis racket back in the toy box and go upstairs to take a shower."
liam: "ButMommy --"

me: "liam, i need you to stop reading that book and put your baseball uniform in the hamper."
liam: "ButMommy --"

i've become so accustomed to this that it barely registers with me anymore. i expect it just like i expect someone to answer the phone with "hello?" or the cashier at the grocery to tell me to "have a nice day". and liam has grown so accustomed to saying it that he'll utter the phrase when he doesn't even mean to. case in point, this happened last night:

me: "liam, since you've done such a great job on your homework, you get to pick out which cookie you'd like for a treat."
liam: "ButMommy --"
me: "yes, liam?"
liam: (the fact that i responded caused him to pause. he looked up at me, and then around him, as if he were snapping out of a reverie.) "oh. umm ... what did you say? something about a cookie?"

this opportunity was too good to pass up.

me: "i asked you to go clean up your room before having a cookie."
liam: "ButMommy --"

aah. back to normal.

a party fit for a princess

2011-05-16T00:05:00.002-04:00

this past sunday was an exciting one around here. so exciting that susanna, our sleepyhead who has to be forced out of bed most mornings in time for school, actually got up on her own. i awoke to see her standing right next to my side of the bed, beaming from ear to ear as she excitedly informed me, "today is my party!" i probably would have joined her in jumping up and down if it weren't for the fact that it was only 5:45 a.m.

i'm ashamed to admit this, but i do not like birthday parties. well -- i should be more specific. i do like being invited to birthday parties, and going to them, and socializing, and eating the cake. what i do not like is planning them. the moment liam's is over in mid-august i heave a huge sigh of relief, knowing that it will be another eight or so months before i have to even think about planning another.

fortunately, i am married to a wonderful man who ~~helps me plan these parties, choosing the themes and invitations and locations~~ found a groupon with a great deal on a visit by a real-life princess at a children's party. he sent me the link, and i didn't think twice before clicking that "buy now!" button. done, i thought, proud of myself for having made this huge decision with months to spare. cross that off my list.

but i soon realized that my decisions were just beginning. when? where? will we serve a meal? whom do we invite? cake or cupcakes? ice cream too? and the most important question of all: what princess?

i left that last question up to susanna. i read out the list of options to her, which included all of her favorite disney stars. ariel, snow white, tiana ... how could she possibly choose? knowing her to normally be her mother's daughter, i braced myself for much second-guessing and changing-of-the-mind and debating the pros and cons of each.

but she surprised me. "cinderella," she stated definitively. "i want cinderella at my birthday party." and that was that.

and so, a cinderella party was born. the groupon deal included an hour of time with your princess, who would do an art activity with the girls, give them mini-makeovers, and read them a story. and at 4:30 p.m. on sunday, fifteen preschool girls were in our driveway, all decked out in their own various princess costumes, squealing with delight at the sight of a real-life cinderella sashaying towards them.

let me tell you a little bit about this cinderella, with an upfront disclaimer that i'm probably a bit biased when it comes to real-life cinderellas. the last time we saw cinderella in person, we were dining with her in her castle at disneyworld. it was like she had leapt off the disney film reel and straight into our presence -- her hair was the perfect coif, her skin was the same creamy white, her dress was pristine, and her mannerisms were studied and exact. i'd wager a guess that the cinderella in cinderella's castle in disneyworld has to be one of the top five cinderellas on planet earth. that must be the pinnacle of princess pinnacles -- being offered that opportunity must announce to the princess stratosphere that you've really arrived.

unfortunately, that cinderella must have stayed in her castle in orlando, for she was definitely not the one who arrived at our house on sunday. our cinderella -- the one sashaying down our driveway with the fifteen girls engulfing her -- was a tad different. she had on a sort of neon yellow wig, slightly askew on the top of her head. instead of a silky, genteel princess voice, hers was a bit ~~rougher~~ less refined. and when she turned and leaned down to talk to one of the girls, i could see her black bra peeking through a hole in her costume. i half-expected her to grab a pack of cigarettes out of her goody bag and teach the kids how to blow smoke rings.

but right after making eye contact across the room with chris, and sharing a slight smile at what was before us, i looked around the room. what i saw amazed me: thirty eyes staring adoringly at our cinderella, following her every move and bombarding her with questions. "did you get here in your coach?" "where is prince charming right now?" "which other princess do you see the most?" "where are your mice friends?" as she patiently answered each one, they hung on her every word. they were mesmerized.

and i realized that to susanna and her friends, this wasn't some twenty-year old working a part-time gig on the weekends for some extra cash, squeezing herself into a costume that was probably a bit too snug and wearing a wig that itched her scalp. this was CINDERELLA. and cinderella had actually come to susanna's party! and she was going to help them make their own tiaras! and she was going to dab some lip gloss on their mouths! and she was going to read them a story! CINDERELLA WAS IN THE HOUSE!

the two hours flew by. while i remained on the porch, taking pictures of each guest with the star of the show, chris monitored the back yard while up to a dozen preschool girls ran around or swung in the hammock or played in the playhouse. we somehow managed to feed them all lemonade and grapes and chicken nuggets (and ketchup, of course -- lots and lots of ketchup), and then sang to susanna while she blew out the candles on her cookie cake, and reuinted each guest with the tiara they had crafted when their parents picked them up.

as soon as the last little girl left, chris and i collapsed on the couch in the family room with cold beverages in hand, but barely enough energy to lift the glass to our lips. we were exhausted. fifteen giddy and lively five-year old girls will do that, i suppose. my eyes took in what was around me, calculating how much time it would take to return the house to some semblance of order. i made a mental note to a) find an alternate location for future children's birthday parties and b) severely decrease the guest list next time around.

but then my eyes rested on our daughter. she was sitting on the floor, surrounded by unopened presents, still dressed in her cinderella costume with bright pink blush on her soft little cheeks. "this is my most favorite day i have ever ever had," she told us. "it was PERFECT. and i still can't believe that cinderella came to my party!" she beamed at us, her blue eyes dancing, as happy as i'd ever seen her.

i think that just about sums up parenthood. the work, the expense, the energy, the time, the chaos ... we do it all for moments like this, when your child tells you that she's just had the best day of her life, and how she'll remember it forever and always. i don't doubt that she will; she'll surely have a picture of her and her friends with cinderella hanging in her room for a long time to come. she'll remember the makeover and the story and the cake, and will probably wear the tiara she made until it falls apart.

but what i pray is that she also remembers the most important part of her special day: the love and joy that surrounded her. for it's the knowledge of that love, and the confidence that comes from knowing how loved you are, that can get you through just about anything. i strive to instill in my children that knowledge and that confidence through all that i do as their parent -- whether it's having meaningful talks about God, or playing hopscotch in the driveway. i fail a lot, don't get me wrong. but i keep at it, realizing that it's not enough to just tell them i love them. what matters most is how i show them.

which might, on occasion, include throwing an over-the-top party with a cinderella whose black bra is showing.

wordless wednesday

2011-05-11T14:39:00.002-04:00

we are drowning in a sea of totally useless, unnecessary, taking-up-space JUNK that we've hauled down from the attic in preparation for our yard sale this saturday. you can barely turn around upstairs without running into an old pack-and-play, or unraveling wicker laundry basket, or a container of scrapbooking tools that cost a ridiculous amount of money at the time that have been collecting dust ever since i stopped in the middle of susanna's second year album, never to return again. (had i only known how much easier -- and cheaper -- blogging was at the time ...) it is scary to think that we haven't even lived in our house for three years, and when we moved in, we had ridded ourselves of all our old junk. i think our new junk must have regenerated itself while we were busy embracing the "out of sight, out of mind" philosophy.

all that to say that i just don't have time to spend on a thoughtful post this week, especially since the day after our yard sale that will undoubtedly be far more trouble than it's worth, we're having sixteen preschool girls here to celebrate susanna's birthday. i fear that i have bitten off far more than i can chew. (speaking of chewing, my eyes just rested on a lovely electric carving knife that we received as a wedding present twelve years ago, still unopened with the gift tag attached. priced to sell at $5 -- any takers?)

so for today's quick wordless wednesday post, below is susanna as you can find her any afternoon these days at 3:15 pm: walking one of her baby dolls in the stroller up to the bus stop to wait for liam. i chose yesterday for a photograph since she was still dressed in her ill-fitting black leotard from ballet, out of which her turquoise panties are showing at the bottom. along with her dark purple hairbow (left over from a coordinating dress she wore to school) and mismatched socks, she's the definition of a ragamuffin if i ever saw one. but just the cutest almost-five year old ragamuffin i've ever seen, if i do say so myself.

speaking of rags and muffins, i'm pretty sure i've unearthed both dishrags and muffin tins, to be sold at our yard sale. don't you want to come? if you buy the electric carving knife, i'll throw them in for free.

about my mom, by susanna

2011-05-08T11:33:00.003-04:00

this post is courtesy of susanna, who presented a portrait and description of me at "muffins with moms" this past week at preschool. it was helpful to have her pitch in with today's entry, since i apparently have quite a bit of dishes to get back to washing. happy mother's day!

wordless wednesday

2011-05-04T23:01:00.000-04:00

when spring sports registration rolled around a few months ago, liam quite matter-of-factly informed us that he was totally uninterested in playing t-ball again. "it's boring," he said. "why do i have to hit from the tee when i can hit a ball daddy pitches to me?"

so we asked the league director if he could play in the next level up, which is coach-pitch baseball, even though he's not technically the right age. thankfully, he agreed. liam's first game was yesterday and, just in case you didn't tune into ESPN last night, here are the highlights:

lullabies

2011-05-01T14:16:00.000-04:00

the kids are surprisingly non-competitive, for the most part, when it comes to getting stuff. and by "stuff", i mean both tangibles and intangibles: food, praise, toys, attention, gifts, time. they do want to make sure the each get the same number of cookies for dessert, but in all other areas, they have a pretty impressive grasp of the concept that it all comes out in the wash.

but a few weeks ago, as i left liam's room to go sing "oh susanna" to his sister, he looked up at me, glumly. "why don't you have a liam song for me?" he asked.

i was about to launch into an explanation: there's a famous folk song with your sister's name in it and they even spell it correctly! ... i hadn't read all the sleep training books when you were born and didn't realize how important a routine was ... she's always been a terrible sleeper and she needed a soothing mechanism ... i knew that people throughout her life would break out into said song when they meet her and i wanted her to be familiar with the tune ... and so on. i actually did have a list of good reasons as to why i did something i did. (for once.)

but i looked at his face and immediately switched gears. "oh, sweetheart, i had no idea you wanted me to sing to you!" i said, all the while thinking this child is almost seven and now he wants a lullaby? "is there a song you'd like to hear?"

"the liam song," he replied.

oh, right. sure. the liam song.

"well, honey, there's not a famous song with 'liam' in it like there is for susanna. BUT," sensing the inevitable disappointment that was beginning to creep across his face, "i could sing to you the lullaby that i made up while i nursed you when you were teeny-tiny. would you like that?" he nodded, excitedly, obviously unaware of how lame my made-up song was.

so i had no choice but to launch into my "i love liam" song. the tune is "frère jacques?" and the impressive lyrics go like this: "i love liam / i love liam / yes i do / yes i do / he is a good bay-bee / i love him ve-ry much / liam mann / liam mann."

i braced myself for the feedback that i felt was warranted. i mean, if it had been my mom singing crap like that to me, i probably would have responded with something along the lines of, "are you kidding me? susanna gets a beautiful tune with a bridge, intrinsic rhymes, and a storyline with references to american history, and this is what i get?" but instead, he just beamed at me. and then he asked for more.

"um, well, that's pretty much it," i told him. "that's where the song ended."

"but susanna gets two verses in hers," he replied, thereby refuting what i deem true about my children's non-competitive natures. "can't you make another one up for me?"

so i put on my thinking cap. and this time, my creative juices obviously flowing, i whipped up a second stanza in three seconds flat: "i love liam / i love liam / yes i do / yes i do / he is a good big boy/ i love him ve-ry much / liam mann / liam mann." (just in case you didn't catch it, the lyrics change is in bold.)

he's apparently quite easy to please, for it was a hit, and we now have a new bedtime routine. after prayers, i sing susanna her song, and then i cross the hall to sing liam his. i've learned that it is not enough to sit at the foot of his bed and sing; he wants me close to him. in fact, he reminds me that he likes to close his eyes and actually feel me breathe on his face while i form the words.

and every night that i have the privilege of indulging him his sweet request, i can't help but stare at him as i sing. his eyes are closed and he has the most serene smile on his still-soft, round face that each day is becoming less round and less soft. i am instantly transported in my mind to the days when i first sang this song, as i rocked his tiny body in my arms after feeding him, his translucent eyelids fluttering as he drifted off to sleep.

and now, there he is, turning seven years old in a matter of months, a master of his multiplication tables, a budding soccer star, and a lover of the humor in knock-knock jokes. a big boy, just like my newly revised lyrics say. but still, in so many ways, my baby.

i love liam. i love liam. yes i do.

full circle

2011-04-25T02:08:00.004-04:00

ever since i can remember, i've wanted to be a teacher. even in preschool when i was asked what i wanted to be when i grew up, and everyone around me had fascinating ambitions like dinosaur tamers and ice skaters and astronauts and circus performers, i held fast. my area of discipline would often change -- some days i thought i'd pursue music education, others inspired me to focus on creative writing -- but at every point in my life, i just knew that God had called me to teach.

it was on the day that i stepped foot into my sixth grade math class that i decided that i would become a math teacher, and i never looked back. in the sixth grade, my math teacher was mrs. wall. out of all the stellar teachers i've had in my life, mrs. wall will always remain one of my favorites. she was funny, she was kind, she was interesting, and she was an excellent educator. long after i left the hallowed halls of apex elementary, i kept in touch with her. we would get together for dinner when i was home for breaks from college, i'd pick her brain for advice while i was student teaching, and i even interviewed her for a college paper i had to write. and it was mrs. wall who set in motion one of the most important meetings i would ever have. when i called her to share my news of accepting a teaching position up in alexandria after graduation, she asked me, "do you know chris mann?" it turned out that one of her son's best friends was also moving up to the DC area, and she thought it would be a grand idea for us to meet. "i'm going to give him your number," she told me. "promise me you'll talk to him!" and so, when he called me up a few weeks later, i did.

it is a little mind-blowing to contemplate how different my entire life would be, had apex elementary school in 1985 randomly assigned me to some other math teacher's roster.

thirteen years after i was a student in her math class, mrs. wall was at my wedding, and her son was one of our groomsmen. and a few pews away from her, across the aisle, sat stacey holladay.

that year, i was a sixth grade math teacher myself, and stacey holladay was one of my students. i still remember the first time i met her, as a bubbly eleven-year old with wavy brown hair and a beatific smile, who walked into my fourth period class in august of 1998. and, much like i did with mrs. wall, i have kept in close touch with stacey long after she left the hallowed halls of dillard drive middle. she has gone on to do great things: she graduated magna cum laude from nc state, secured a fantastic job, and became engaged to an equally amazing young man named jonathan.

and, thirteen years after she was a student in my math class, i was at her wedding. and my children, who count miss stacey as their favorite babysitter ever, were her program attendants.

i don't personally know any dinosaur tamers or ice skaters or astronauts or circus performers, but i can't imagine any profession receiving back more than teaching. i sat there at stacey's wedding and felt it fitting that thirteen years ago, part of the curriculum i taught stacey and the other girls around me focused on circles. we circled together later for pictures, my arms linked with young women -- a nurse, a marine biologist, an HR professional, and a fellow teacher -- peers of mine by now, but who all still call me mrs. mann. just as i will always call mrs. wall, my sixth grade teacher, mrs. wall.

and i realized what a full circle moment it was.

wordless wednesday

2011-04-20T11:06:00.000-04:00

the kids were in a wedding this past saturday. an outdoor wedding, mere hours before tornadoes ripped through the very area where the wedding took place. but more on the wedding a bit later! in the meantime, feel free to marvel at their cool moves on the dance floor. they might need to hone their skills before going professional, but i think they've got their sweet sibling smooch down pat.

delusions of grandeur

2011-04-18T09:12:00.001-04:00

last night, at bedtime, chris requested a kiss from the kids before he left for his soccer game. liam planted a big one on his cheek before turning back to his almanac. but susanna actually turned away, almost coyly. chris feigned heartbreak and asked her why.

" oh daddy, i will kiss you. i just don't kiss you that fast."

"why not?"

"because i'm a princess," she stated quite matter-of-factly. "and the way princesses kiss is like this." she closed her eyes, puckered out her lips, and stuck out her chin towards him. "and then i move myself very, very slowly towards you." and, sure enough, she did -- moving inch by inch closer to him, eyes still firmly shut. "and then, when i kiss you, the music plays!"

i feel almost sorry for the unfortunate sucker who's going to give her her first real kiss as a teenager, for he apparently has some mighty big shoes to fill.

oh, wait -- what am i saying? i actually don't feel sorry for him at all. upon second thought, i think i'll encourage this fantasy of hers. she needs to know that she has no business kissing any boy until there's a 42-piece orchestra waiting in the wings and thousands of lanterns being floated up into the sky like rapunzel had in "tangled". yep, i'm thinking her expectations are perfectly reasonable.

wordless wednesday

2011-04-13T01:12:00.011-04:00

i finally ~~got chris to figure out~~ fixed the video camera, and found this long-lost footage of our visit to sea world with my parents back in february. (and you thought i was finally done posting about our florida trip, didn't you?)

as i wrote on our form to request an excused absence for educational purposes, our sea world excursion was indeed quite educational. i think this clip puts all doubts to rest as to how much liam learned at one of the exhibits. at the very least, i have footage of just how brilliant and mature our six-year old can be.

donuts with dads, part 2

2011-04-07T20:52:00.002-04:00

"donuts with dads" took place this morning at preschool, and i honestly believe susanna was just as excited about her special morning with chris as she was about christmas. it has been all she could talk about this week -- she must have asked me, "how many more days until daddy comes to my class?" a hundred times, and last night she had trouble getting to sleep because she could hardly contain herself. finally, the day arrived, and off they went at 9:00 a.m., susanna perched on a booster seat in the cramped back seat of chris's two-door car.

below is susanna's description of her daddy. seems i snagged myself a good one: older and taller than i am, but not overweight; a man who loves church so much that it qualifies as his favorite restaurant; and who is so in touch with his feminine side that when he's not working, he's playing with dolls. what a man!

(for the first installment of donuts with dads, click here.)

snort

2011-04-02T22:56:00.002-04:00

if you'd ever like to see a walking, breathing, living example of spring allergies, look no further than liam mann. watery eyes? check. runny nose? yep. eczema around the eyes and nose because of constant rubbing? of course. chapped lips, cough, and fatigue due to restless nights? yes, yes, and yes.

i'm not a big believer in medicine. i take my epilepsy medication on a daily basis because if i didn't, i wouldn't be allowed by the state of north carolina to own a driver's license, but other than that, i tend to balk at drugs. i just don't like putting foreign stuff like that in my body. it goes hand-in-hand with body piercings in the convoluted world of the sara mann philosophy.

but i finally caved in with liam. after listening to the poor child blowing his raw little nose at all hours of the night, and walking into his room in the morning to find hundreds of balled up wet tissues littering his floor, i realized that it was time to take him to the pediatrician. and sure enough, she deemed him one of the worst cases of seasonal allergies she had seen this year -- which is saying a lot, since she said she had seen about sixty kids in the past week with the same issues -- and prescribed claritin and flonase.

which reminds me. in my next life, i'm going to come back and name prescription drugs for a living, because surely i could do better than "flonase". around here, we've started teasing poor liam (we are a sensitive bunch, aren't we?) by cackling, "SNORT!" each time he attempts to suck up all that runny snot and bypass the tissue box. so i think i shall name my new prescription drug Snort Abort. quite catchy, no? i already have the commercial planned out: a cute six year old blond boy, yearning to play outside, who cannot because of the pollen. and then he takes a whiff of Snort Abort, and he can now enjoy his backyard play area! and his father, also riddled with the same woes, can now enjoy working on his SUV! and his sister, holding a racket, can now play tennis! yes, the tag line might look like this:

SNORT ABORT

to enjoy your fort ...

or your carport ...

or the tennis court ...

or things of all sorts!

hmm. maybe i need to stick with teaching. regardless, liam could be the poster child for Snort Abort. he's just the cutest miserable little guy i've ever seen, if i do say so myself.

please, no retorts.

wordless wednesday

2011-03-30T00:01:00.004-04:00

saturday morning found us with a cold, nasty rain and the fire turned on in the fireplace. (every time i describe the fire as "on", i cringe a little inside, because honestly, how much more fake can i sound? but the fire wasn't "roaring" and we weren't "throwing on more logs" or "stoking the flames" ... we just turned that little dial and whoosh! fire.)

anyway, after our sleepyhead susanna finished her breakfast at 10:00 a.m. and surmised that there was no fun to be had outside and no school to attend, so she took matters into her own hands. "i'm going to go upstairs now," she informed us as she headed out of the kitchen. "i think i'm going to go build disneyworld." chris and i exchanged looks -- "build disneyworld"? what does that mean? -- but an hour later, we were invited for a tour, and then we understood. there, on liam's floor, sat susanna's version of disneyworld.

she had rummaged through liam's blocks and had unearthed every disney-related figurine in her bedroom, closet, and playroom combined, and had set out to recreate the highlights of our disneyworld trip. while she proudly showed off her work, chris and i shook our heads in disbelief. her memory ... the attention to detail ... her creativity. i daresay she succeeded. here are just a few features of disneyworld, susanna-style:

surely this needs no caption -- it's the teacup ride

the five princesses mill about the castle where we dined for the Most Expensive Lunch Ever. "cinderella is in the middle and high up because it's her castle," susanna informed us. "and that's the cake they gave daddy for his birthday that i ate because i didn't like that pudding stuff." (note to self: do not waste effort in the future making creme brulee.)

belle, the beast, and a stand-in perform just like they did live on stage at hollywood studios. (she explained, "i don't have a gaston doll, so i had to use that jafar person from aladdin instead. i think the mean guys are all pretty much the same, though.") note the chairs for the audience, which seem to be more comfortable than the bleachers we had to use

this might be my favorite. concentric circles of animals, some with people sitting on their backs ... it's the carousel! and if you look closely, the little red dude in the foreground is presenting a little white piece of paper to the attendant. it's his Fast Pass, of course.

forget-me-not

2011-03-24T11:54:00.001-04:00

recently it seems i'm becoming even more forgetful than i normally am. for example, the other night right before i left to tutor, chris reminded me that i'd placed my extra set of car keys on the windshield . of course, that little tidbit of information promptly left my brain until ten minutes later, when i was barreling down the interstate and caught a glare through my dashboard. there were my keys, hanging on for dear life below the wipers. somehow they held fast and i retrieved them at the first traffic light.

and last night, i forgot to help liam choose today's outfit. (we always consult the weather forecast and decide together what clothes he'd like to wear, which makes our mornings run so much more smoothly.) so after breakfast, i sent him up to his room to dress himself. and this is how he returned:

navy and bright yellow striped polo, brown and green plaid shorts. i suppose he could have started a new fashion trend, if only i had allowed him to leave the house like that.

the one consolation to my early-onset alzheimer's is that i'm apparently in good company: the tooth fairy forgot to visit last night as well. after liam's initial disappointment (and a few tears -- i bet that tooth fairy felt awful) he did find a note she left, which explained how there were a ton of kids in france who also lost their teeth yesterday and her visit to north carolina was delayed a bit. a note which, incidentally, he came across when he went back upstairs to change his shirt.

so i guess everything worked out quite well in the end ... if i'm remembering it all correctly.

spelling and napkins and love

2011-03-19T21:53:00.005-04:00

i know i've mentioned this before, but i still am amazed at how, well, nice my children are to each other. they have their low points, don't get me wrong -- but a good 95% of the time they really do like each other. (and sorry for the italics; i'm just trying to emphasize what a surprise this still is to me.)

i guess my pessimistic self keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop; i've convinced myself that this stage of sibling bliss can be temporary at best. but when i flip through our old blog books, i realize i've been thinking these thoughts for years -- and yet, nothing has changed. the other shoe hasn't dropped; no trouble has emerged. they've just always been friends.

this afternoon as we were driving to an impromptu cookout, susanna announced, "guess what, everybody? i know how to spell 'stop' and 'go'! wanna hear?" and without waiting for an answer, she continued, "S-T-O-P and G-O," obviously quite proud of her new accomplishment.

i braced for liam's reaction. i've been around enough kindergartners recently to know that once you hit elementary school, you are a Big Shot Who Knows Everything and All Younger Children Are So Babyish. i sort of expected a haughty sigh accompanied by a "that's sooo easy, susanna. everyone knows that."

but why do i expect that, when i've witnessed the compassion that emanates from my elder child? why don't i give our son more credit? for instead of disdain, this was his response: "wow, susanna! you are so smart. i can't believe you know how to spell those words!" i glanced in the rearview mirror at her, and was struck by the image i saw. she was beaming, basking in the glow of praise that only an older sibling could give. kids learn at an early age that their parents will always think they're amazing. but to hear it from her big brother? susanna's face made it clear: nothing could mean more.

this experience reminded me of something that had happened just a few days ago. right before liam skipped out to our neighbor's car to ride to school one morning, he brought me a napkin. "i made this for susanna last night," he told me. "make sure you put it in her snack bag!" (note: this is the only time in the hundreds -- literally -- of sports drawings liam has made where he has ever been on the losing side. no higher compliment could be paid.)

my initial intent for this post was to capture these sweet moments, so that when they're teenagers and fighting like cats and dogs, i can look back at this tangible evidence that they once did actually get along. but upon reflection, i've decided that i have to train myself to stop thinking this way. as they've grown, i've watched their relationship also grow, and i know it will keep on growing and changing and reforming itself. but i really am starting to believe that they ~~might~~ will actually be friends a decade from now.

and maybe our future blog books will be filled with similar stories. ones that i write not to prove to ourselves that they once got along, but ones that i write to remind ourselves of how much they've loved and enjoyed each other, constantly, from the very beginning.

groundhog day

2011-03-12T15:47:00.001-05:00

back in early february, liam's kindergarten class was asked to write about Groundhog Day. i'm not exactly sure, but i suspect that his teacher was expecting a few sentences about the groundhog, whether he saw his shadow, and what that might mean about winter. imagine her surprise when liam turned in this stream-of-consciousness, run-on-sentence, but oh-so-creative gem ...

Groundhog Day by Liam Mann

Once upon a time in 1892 there was a groundhog named Gail. Gail had a friend. Gail's friend's name was Pam. Gail and Pam loved to play soccer. In 1900 when they were 8 years old they moved to Moscow, Russia. They had to go under the dirt when they were traveling something happened they saw a burrow that said Mac. They chose to knock on the door when they knocked on the door Mac opened the door Mac said hey, do you two want to watch the groundhog soccer world cup groundhog Russia vs. groundhog Spain and it turned out that groundhog Russia won the world cup for their 1st time and the score was 2 to 0. Yay! said Gail. After that Mac turned off the tv then they played some games then they brushed their teeth they all went to bed then turned off the light then they went to sleep. Mac set his alarm clock for 7:35 a.m. then in the morning Mac was the first one to wake up then Gail and Pam woke up then Mac and Gail and Pam went downstairs for breakfast. Mac cooked oatmeal after that Gail and Pam decided to live at Mac's house then Mac, and Pam, and Gail played cards. The End.

wordless wednesday

2011-03-09T00:00:00.009-05:00

you couldn't possibly have thought that i was done posting pictures of our disneyworld trip, right?

today i'm including some from the resort where we stayed. i'm not going to even attempt to explain all the nuances of timeshares -- chris and i sat through a (surprisingly interesting) salespitch while we were down there to get $75 disney bucks and i think i left more confused than i was when i began -- but suffice it to say that my parents invited us down for week to florida FOR FREE. we chose a place close to the parks that catered to young families, with two incredible pools, a miniature golf course, and more activities than anyone could possibly do in a day. (karaoke! volleyball! campfire! bingo! movie night! you get the idea.)

i'm glad we chose wisely. because whenever liam is asked what his most favorite part of our trip was, he doesn't hesitate. it wasn't the rides or the shows or the fireworks or the parades. it was playing putt-putt. (note to self: next year, buy him a pass to the local miniature golf place and save yourself a few thousand bucks.)

a huge thank you to my mom and dad for such a fantastic place to stay. we loved every minute of it.

eating breakfast on the porch overlooking one of the pools -- not a bad way to start a february morning

if you look closely, the small blond head coming around the bend is liam, careening down the waterslide

this was more susanna's speed

the sign next to hole #1: "welcome to Putt of Course"

on every hole, our competitive son would ask chris what the par was. and on every hole, since no par was posted, chris would totally make one up. he has his Putt of Course scorecard displayed prominently in his bedroom to this day

we thought there would be no way they'd both finish the heaping mounds of ice cream dished out at the sundae party. somehow they managed to lick the bowls clean

i guess susanna wanted to work off some of those calories?

heaven

truth be told

2011-03-05T10:06:00.000-05:00

as many similarities our children share, there's one area where they could not be more different -- and never has it been more painfully obvious than this week. it was one of those times when you think, surely there is a happy medium out there somewhere, but Lord knows it ain't in our offspring.

liam has never once, in his six and a half years on this earth, told a lie. i don't think he could do it if he tried -- it's almost as if his mouth can't form the words to utter a mistruth. don't get me wrong; that's a good thing. we can always trust him and that speaks volumes about his character. but i've started to wonder if he's almost too honest. i recently had a conference with his AG teacher, who pulls him out twice a week in a small group for math enrichment. it is a true privilege and one that we know he's fortunate to have, as most elementary schools in our district don't even have an AG teacher for grades younger than third. he does well and thoroughly enjoys it, but i was disappointed to hear at this conference that he goofs off from time to time. the rest of the group are all first grade boys and i think it's a case of him trying to impress them in his immature kindergarten way, but who knows. the reasoning doesn't even matter. what does matter is that he's abusing this privilege and his behavior must improve. so i had a heart-to-heart with him and he agreed that he could do better.

on wednesday afternoon, it was pouring down rain so i decided to surprise the kids with a visit to our club. the children's activity room is open at 4 pm and i planned to work out while they enjoyed some downtime -- susanna always brings some art activity, and liam makes a beeline to the wii. (and we all know how obsessed our son is with the wii.) it's something they both request every day, but because of my recent back problems i've been forced to stay away from the treadmill and weights. so when i informed them that we'd be going, liam quite literally started jumping up and down with glee.

and then, as we were shrugging on our raincoats to head out the door to the car, he looks at me with a dejected sort of look. and before i could even ask him what was wrong, he blurts out, "i was so silly today in my math group and my teacher had to call on me three times and i just can't believe i did that."

whew. honesty. at that moment, i almost felt like it was overrated. because i couldn't, in good conscience as a parent, be dealt that news and then reward him with a chance to play the wii for a half-hour. we made a 180 degree turn back into the laundry room, shut the door behind us, removed our raincoats ... and wailing ensued. sobbing to the point that he almost couldn't breathe. i felt conflicted; how could i punish my son for being honest? but it just didn't feel right to ignore his misbehavior just because he had done the right thing hours later. another heart-to-heart followed, and then, a letter addressed to his teacher, apologizing and promising to do better. and the whole time i'm watching my sensitive, regretful little boy labor over his note, i marveled at the fact that he didn't have to tell me. i wouldn't have known otherwise. but he felt such guilt and remorse that he felt he had no choice but to come clean.

fairly promising story, right? pat on the back for mom and dad, for obviously doing some mighty fine parenting to raise such an honest kid, right? oh, sara. not so fast.

on thursday, i picked up susanna at a friend's house, where she had gone for a playdate immediately after preschool. i noticed that her cute black and white gingham top was paired not with the black leggings she had left our house in that morning, but some brown pants that weren't even hers. i asked her why, and she gave me some dismissive answer about them getting wet on the playground. it had rained the night before so it made sense.

and then i received an email from her teacher, letting me know that -- oh, i hate to even document this -- our darling girl had decided it would be fun to drop her drawers behind the playhouse outside to relieve herself. (i'll pause for a moment while that sinks in.) apparently, she needs a bit more practice with her squatting technique. ms. kathy said that susanna was so upset that she didn't press the matter, and just swapped out the bottom half of the outfit and left it at that.

it was time for another mother-and-child heart-to-heart. but this one went far differently than the one i had with liam. "tell me what happened on the playground on thursday when your leggings got wet," i asked her.

"oh, um, i splashed in a puddle," she replied, her eyes fixated on the dolls in her hand.

"hmm. you'd told me earlier that the slide was wet."

her eyes remained downcast. "oh. well, actually ..." she trailed off. "actually, i spilled water at snack time."

good gracious, i thought. can i at least give her props for coming up with some viable explanations on the spot? after it was obvious she wasn't going to come clean, i resorted to the age-old tactic: a threat. "i guess i'm going to have to call ms. kathy right now and ask her," i said, and reached for the phone.

she finally looked up at me, eyes wide, and then she finally, finally, confessed. i tried to make her see that what she had done wouldn't have been a big deal at all had she just told me the truth. it was her dishonesty which was so troubling. (it goes without saying that i'm already dreading her teenage years.)

in the end, i hope that all three of us learned our lessons this week. i'm crossing my fingers that susanna learned it's best to tell the truth from the get-go. for liam,if i'm realistic, i think that he probably learned that he needs to time his spontaneous confessions a bit better.

and my lesson? i learned that as soon as i'm feeling pretty good about how things are going in my child-rearing world, there's always something right around the corner to remind me that i have pretty much no clue what i'm doing.

magic

2011-03-02T14:58:00.005-05:00

ever since returning from disneyworld, i've wondered how i could possibly do justice to our trip on our blog. i've needed the ten days it took me to find our digital camera (which turned out to be stuck in a hidden interior pocket of our pool bag) to process the whole experience. even in the midst of it all as it was happening, i'd try to hold onto images in my mind, desperate to remember the sights and sounds so i could recreate them with words later. i'll have to write about their reaction to this ride! i'd think. or, i'll definitely have to use this picture. or, i can't wait to look back at this post and re-live these moments. because, as much as i enjoy sharing our escapades with family and friends and whomever might somehow stumble upon this site, the reason i blog is to document our lives for our future selves. i've mentioned before how at the end of every year, i print our blog as a hardbound book with dozens of added photos, and each sits on our coffee table in the family room in a slowly-growing stack. nothing makes me happier than to find one or both of my children quietly poring over one of the albums as they re-live memories of years past. the blog is our time capsule. so now i'm faced with the daunting task of how to even attempt encapsulating our first-ever big family trip so that, when time has passed and our memories have begun to fade around the edges, we can turn to these few pages and remember.

i probably shouldn't admit this, but neither chris nor i were terribly excited about our upcoming adventure in the weeks leading up to our departure. don't get me wrong -- we were looking forward to being down there, and knew that the kids were going to enjoy it. but there are just so many details to take care of when it comes to packing up a family of four (and facing twenty hours round-trip in our car), especially for weather that necessitates a wardrobe that is stored away in the attic, that we got a little bogged down with the preparations. i had to create a week's worth of lesson plans for my classes, make sure i had gathered up all of liam's make-up work from his multiple teachers, and find friends to substitute for me in my volunteer positions. chris had to line up whatever he had to line up for work, coordinate petsitting for super, and make sure that our eight-year old SUV was ready to get us down there safely. you know, all the mundane details that you have to take care of just to make sure the world doesn't stop spinning while you frolick and play in the sunshine three states away.

and on top of all of the normal necessities, our destination was disneyworld -- which, as every friend of ours warned us, requires extensive planning like no other trip does. when i first brought home "the unofficial guide to disneyworld 2011" from the library back in november, chris's eyes grew wide as i read out some of the many pieces of advice contained in the tome's 800+ pages. regarding securing a reservation for a character meal, you might find this as mind-boggling as we did: " to get a table, you must dial at almost exactly 7 a.m. EST 90 days prior to the day you wish to dine. we conducted synchronizing tests and determined that disney reservation-system clocks are accurate to within one to three seconds of the U.S. naval observatory clock. as soon as a live agent comes on the line, interrupt immediately and don't engage in 'good mornings'. time is of the essence. " (somehow the stars aligned, for i called only three months ahead of time and somehow secured a table for four in cinderella's castle on chris's birthday. which is, incidentally, exactly what every man desires when he turns 36.) i printed out touring guides of every park, which included step-by-step instructions of which rides to hit first, which ones to use fastpasses on, when to take breaks, and which exhibits were must-sees. i even downloaded an app to my phone that kept up-to-the-minute reports on the lengths of lines. i researched which parks were labeled Must Avoid on which days and when the parades were. planning for disneyworld, suffice it to say, is not for the faint of heart. (or a non-type A personality.)

but let me tell you something. you know those disneyworld commercials that showcase the happiest families on earth with the biggest smiles on earth at the most magical place on earth? the ones that, if you haven't ever been, you see and think that there's no way a place can actually be like that? well ... we were those people. we were the happiest family on earth and our smiles were the biggest smiles on earth. and we are now sure that it really is the most magical place on earth.

i'm convinced that disneyworld was designed for a four- and six-year old. they're old enough to remember it, yet young enough to be awestruck. their faces lit up each time they caught sight of one of the characters, whomever it might be. susanna -- our quiet, reserved susanna -- would stalk the princesses, insisting on meeting them and introducing herself and posing for a picture. liam engulfed pinocchio in a bear hug, and laughed the entire time while he and donald duck danced a jig.

they were tall enough for every ride (well, susanna squeaked by with the assistance of her heeled cowgirl boots -- yet another detail to remember while packing) and loved each one. they strapped on the safety belts in "mission: space" and to this day firmly believe that our ship might have crashed had it not been for their quick hands on the control pad. they flew like birds in "soarin", giddy to find tinkerbell alongside of them for a moment or two. they kept their hands on the triggers on toy story mania, sang along to the songs they knew at the little mermaid experience, and, as seen below, got throroughly soaked in splash mountain.

they sat on the curb of main street as they eagerly waited for the electrical parade to begin, and they beamed as they soaked in the lights and waved at the characters who walked past and waved back. on our final night, they stood hand-in-hand with their little necks bent up towards the sky as they witnessed the most spectacular fireworks show they'd ever seen. and as overly-sentimental as this sounds, i stood behind them with chris and became teary. i felt so blessed to be able to give this gift to them. and humbled to be a part of an experience that i know they will remember for the rest of their lives.

so the planning, the drive, the expense -- it was all worth it. our trip was joy and discovery and love and laughter, all rolled into one.

it was magic.

wishin' upon a star

wordless wednesday, disney style

2011-02-23T23:17:00.001-05:00

... and we're back. i've stayed away from the blog since our disneyworld trip because a) i couldn't find the digital camera to transfer the gazillion pictures we took; b) there's so much to share that i hardly know where to begin; and c) OHMYGOODNESS do i have a ton of work to do from being gone for 8 days.

but i'm here to report that a) i gave up looking for the digital camera for now (does this give you an idea of how poorly we packed the car on our last night there?) and decided to post the few pictures i took on my iphone; b) i figure if i just start with a few photos and captions i can maybe ease back into it; and c) OHMYGOODNESS the work and laundry and all things productive can wait. who says i can't prioritize?!

suffice it to say, for now, that we had the most wonderful family trip (notice how i did not use the term "vacation") and i know that we'll all have memories of our disney adventure for decades to come. it really is a magical place.

now if tinkerbell had only come home with us, she could help us find our elusive camera. where's that pixie dust when you need it?

title: ~~"three beauties and the beast"~~ "one middle-aged momma, two beauties, and the beast"

while us girls were schmoozing with belle, the boys were jamming with the band. there's truly something for everyone at mickey's house

do you ever wonder what the person inside these costumes is actually doing? i mean, they could be rolling their eyes or grimacing every time they're pulled into another photo. or are they just so happy to be walking around in a heavy unwieldy costume in 80 degrees that they're beaming as much as donald is? the world will never know ...

susanna insisted on wearing her princess dress all over magic kingdom. cute on the carousel. not so cute getting her in and out of that thing (it has an attached inner leotard) every time we visited a public restroom

we followed the "dumbo or die" tour from one of our guidebooks, which mapped out a plan of attack on the magic kingdom to ensure that we rode the dumbo ride with as minimal of a waiting time as possible. naturally i had to capture this moment ... what i did not consider is that from my vantage point, the star of the photo is a giant elephant butt

and that seems a rather fitting way to end this post.

when you care enough to send the very best

2011-02-12T14:46:00.001-05:00

i could regale you with fun facts of the past week: three of us down for the count with a stomach virus ... at least a dozen loads of laundry filled with duvets, quilts, top sheets, fitted sheets, mattress pads, pillowcases, stuffed animals, pajamas, towels ... scrubbing carpets bleary-eyed and half-asleep at 5 a.m. ... a little blond head over the trashcan moaning, "i don't think i'll EVER get better" ... but i'll spare you the gory details.

instead, i'll share a picture of the "get well soon" card susanna made for her big brother. play close attention to what liam is doing in her drawing, because that pretty much sums up the past few days in the mann house.

(but, on the bright side, we are thankful we knocked it out before we leave for disneyworld tomorrow. i shudder to think how our vacation might've turned out if all of this had reared its ugly head a week later.)

wordless wednesday

2011-02-09T00:00:00.003-05:00

he shoots, he scores! (and also double dribbles, which is fortunately permitted in the 5-6 year old league.) keep your eye on #1 in the royal blue ...

euphemisms

2011-02-05T10:35:00.000-05:00

call me crazy, but i just don’t seem to find bodily functions as titillating as the elementary school-and-under set. so years ago, we introduced the word “toot” as an acceptable term for, um, passing gas. (ugh. i hate even typing that phrase.) it’s served our family well, i guess, since we have plenty of opportunities to employ this euphemism with a boxer in our midst. (i must hear, "ewwwww -- super tooted!" five times a day.)

but i recently realized that we might have been better off going in a different direction. one morning as we waited for our neighbor to pick up liam for school, i told him that that evening i was going to be working with a high school math student who needed some extra help. i thought nothing of it until the topic came up again over our afternoon snacks. susanna had asked me why my big algebra I teacher’s edition was out on the kitchen counter, so i told her i was leaving after supper to go tutor.

“what’s ‘tutor’ mean?” she asked.

liam jumped in, always eager to educate his sister. “oh, that’s when mommy goes to help out a high school student,” liam explained. “she teaches him how to toot.”

there was a pause … and then we all three erupted into laughter, and i was loudest of all. the kids just found the topic hilarious, but i just couldn’t get the image out of my head. that's what liam has thought i've been doing all these years?! oh. my. gosh.

so, yeah. scratch what i said earlier. i guess there will always be something inherently funny about bodily functions -- no matter how old you are.

wordless wednesday

2011-02-02T22:43:00.000-05:00

aside from a trip to the orthopedist on monday and back again on tuesday for an MRI, i don't think i've left the house in four days. as if i have time for this nonsense. tomorrow i have no choice but to wake up with a miraculous new back since i have a tea party with susanna and her american girl doll at our neighbors' house, my follow-up MRI appointment, and a two-hour pre-algebra workshop. wish me luck. i'm thinking that my percocet tablets might be coming in handy.

in the meantime, i've been meaning to share pictures of the kids' portraits ever since they arrived a few weeks ago. there must be a better way to photograph oil paintings because these photos in no way do them justice -- the flash makes them blurry or less vibrant or something. trust me, they're just perfect. a friend once told me that if her house were burning to the ground and she could go back inside to grab one object, it would be her child's portrait. i couldn't agree more. these will be with me until the day i die.

which might be soon if my back has a say-so in the matter.

anyway ... enough of a pity-party for me. especially when i have these sweet things to make me smile!

the winter of my discontent

2011-01-31T00:17:00.003-05:00

i am seriously affected by the weather. most specifically, winter. words cannot adequately express how much i ~~hate~~ detest winter. i can almost hear one of the kids admonishing me: "mommy said a bad word!" (we don't allow the word "hate" in our house, at least at these young ages. it seems so negative. heretofore i shall use "detest." and no, the irony is not lost on me.)

i have often told chris that i would move to florida in a second if he'd let me. "wouldn't you miss the seasons?" he always asks. but you see, that's what airplanes are for. you get to ride on one, step out into a blast of frigid air, and then hop right back on for a return flight back to warmth. sounds heavenly to me.

because i ~~hate~~ detest cold, dreary, dark, somber days, i sink into a funk every year around this time, and become cold, dreary, dark, and somber myself. i grumble far more than usual. i get irritated more easily. even the simplest tasks become a pain in the you-know-what. (take driving. have you ever tried to squeeze a four-year old dressed in a puffy winter coat into a car seat? i have to add five minutes to every trip just to stuff her into that dadgum britax.) i try my hardest to conceal my funk from our children. i try just as hard to convince myself that i'm succeeding.

this winter, in particular, has seemed never-ending. and it's still january. so when people began talking about the downright balmy weekend forecast, i kept a close eye on the news, my excitement rising ever so slightly with each passing day. and then saturday, i awoke to the sound of birds chirping outside my window. truly! straight out of a disney movie -- i wanted to break out into song as bluebirds tied a ribbon in my hair ala cinderella. the thermometer rose, and with it, my spirits. the sun does exist! there will be an end to this terrible season! we can spend time in this vast area called the outdoors!

and outdoors we were. in the back yard playing tag, in the driveway shooting hoops, at the playground on the monkey bars. and, as icing on the cake, i unearthed a tennis skirt and sleeveless shirt from the depths of my closet and hit the court for the first time since november. it was glorious!

and then, in my warm-up, i went for an overhead ... and threw out my back. it's something i do maybe once every couple years, and, just my luck, my body chose this perfect saturday afternoon to decide it was about time again. i've been pretty much immobile ever since, lying on a heating pad in my bed except for the occasional trip to hobble around like an old man to the kitchen or bathroom.

i still hear those birds. but they're not the bluebirds from cinderella; they're mockingbirds. (get it? they're mocking me.)

wake me up when it's spring.

make no mistake

2011-01-24T00:42:00.005-05:00

i love eavesdropping on my kids. the conversations they have when they don't think adults (or, according to susanna, "anadults" -- she is convinced that the article and the noun together form the word) are listening can be riveting. most are silly, and some are profound. and then some just make me inwardly groan and wonder just what in the ham sandwich my older is teaching my younger.

take today's conversation. they were both at the kitchen table, liam laboring over his math homework and susanna creating yet another art masterpiece. i paused in the doorway, unseen, curious as to what they were discussing. susanna was mulling over her options for what to bring for show-and-tell when she suddenly exclaimed, "oh no! i made a mistake!"

liam was so focused on his subtraction problems that he didn't even look up. "that's okay," he replied. "that's why God created the eraser."

"but i'm using marker! did God create something to erase marker?"

an inquiry such as this caught his attention. "um, i don't know. i guess we could google it." he paused, and i assumed he was probably pondering if a marker eraser was even possible. but then he followed it up with this reassuring gem: "but you know that everyone makes mistakes. so it's okay. even i make mistakes."

now susanna looked up, surprised. "really?" *

"yep. i made a mistake one time in 2009. you remember? it was that day we went to target."

i couldn't make this stuff up if i tried.

---
*note: i believe everyone should have the privilege of having an adoring younger sister. mine still worships the ground i walk on, even after all these years. (right, leslie?)

mr. sensitivity

2011-01-22T11:09:00.001-05:00

oprah has coined the phrase "aha moment" for times when she experiences a revelation. you know, when all of a sudden, you're struck with a discovery that you'd never noticed before. for me, these are never earth-shattering; it's not like i figure out the meaning of the universe or anything. they're more often just simple things where i want to slap my own self up the side of the head because i'd never realized it before.

for example, the bike zing. i was probably twenty-five years old when i learned that a BIKE XING sign meant "bike crossing". i had always thought that it signified a bike zing. you know, the narrow lane on the side of the road for bikes. i'd always wondered why the DMV person laughed when i was going through the sign portion of the oral test. (but i always passed, thankyouverymuch. guess they just thought i was being comical.) chris will roll his eyes when he reads this and wonder why i'm actually admitting this to people ... but i use this example to show that these "aha moments" for me are sometimes the most blatantly obvious things that for whatever reason, i'd never known before.

anyway, i had one of these "aha moments" yesterday with liam. he was sitting in my lap in the family room at about 3:30 pm, and we were talking all about his day. we talked about him buying a jump rope in the school store, what he did in his special math class, and how he enjoyed his lunch since fridays are hot dog days which are the only times he eats from the cafeteria. and then the conversation turned to what was in his bag for his morning snack.

as i'd been putting it together the night before, chris walked in from a tennis match and i handed him the napkin and a marker. i thought it would be fun for him to write liam a cute note as a surprise. i left the kitchen and when i returned five minutes later, i was amazed to find chris still laboring over the napkin. i glanced over his shoulder to find this:

so now that you know the background, this is how our conversation went:

me: did you like the silly surprise that you found in your snack bag?

liam: no.

me: the napkin with the drawing daddy made for you? we thought you would be so happy to find it!

liam, of all possible reactions he could have, actually begins to cry.

me: goodness, liam, what is wrong?

liam: i just felt so sad that daddy was losing in our game. i was beating him by a lot! that's just horrible for daddy!

i pause while this sinks in.

me: sweetheart, it's just a drawing. it didn't really happen. daddy was just being funny.

liam: but why didn't he draw me playing against someone i don't know? like a boy named maybe hank or bob or something?

me (beginning to have my "aha moment"): is this why in all your sports drawings, you're always playing against people who aren't friends or classmates? because you don't want to be beating them?

liam (tearfully): yes. i don't ever want someone i know to lose. i would feel horrible about that.

AHA. after months of wondering why his opponents in his millions of sketches had names of people he didn't know, all of a sudden, i got it. my sweet, kind, sensitive boy didn't want even a depiction of any of his friends having a bad game. it suddenly made sense. i don't know how i'd missed that before.

i so wish that i could keep him like this forever. unjaded, sensitive to others and their feelings, convinced that everyone wants the best for everyone else. sadly, we all know that the world just isn't that way. the only way he'll survive is to develop a thicker skin, toughen up, all those phrases we throw around to mean that basically it's okay to not be as empathetic to others as we should be. and those are lessons that, as a parent, i can't really teach him. he'll learn them as he experiences life and continues to grow.

(so instead, i'll focus on the things that i can teach him. like, exactly what those signs BIKE XING really mean.)

works of art

2011-01-20T15:01:00.004-05:00

the kids received loads of fantastic presents for christmas, mostly from very generous grandparents. in fact, the only thing on either of their lists that didn't find its way under the tree was the ipod susanna requested. (she doesn't even know what an ipod is; she just knows that half her preschool class has one. you probably think i'm joking.)

but out of all of the kids' new treasures, my personal favorite is the small lazy-susan-of-sorts my mom gave them that now holds every last dadgum art supply we own. fat markers, skinny markers, colored pencils, crayons, pens, pencils, erasers, stapler, glue sticks, tape, scissors ... they are all now neatly contained in one glorious piece of plastic. my mom, bless her heart, searched every craft store in the area before giving up and ordering it from the pampered chef catalog. i think it's designed to hold utensils or cooking tools, but it's doing a superb job meeting our needs.

i am especially grateful for this gem because of what our burgeoning art supply used to look like. a while back i created laminated labels for our playroom bins: dolls, games, trains, etc. and on one small white box i put the "art" label, knowing that it would easily hold what we needed it to. fast forward a few years, and the box was just about obsolete. we had markers spilling out the top, glue sticks uncapped and dried out, crayons broken into a million places at the bottom of the bin, and paper crammed in from every angle. all because our two children had decided to adopt art as their new ~~hobby~~ passion -- two picassos in the making. nowadays, at any given time, you can find one or both of them at the kitchen table, heads bent over their new spiral sketchpads with marker or crayon gripped in hand, frowning in concentration as they pour their little souls into their newest creation.

of course, now that i've got it all figured out where to put all the supplies, i have an entirely different problem: where do i hang all of their masterpieces? the corkboards in the playroom have no square inch left; the walls are a definite no since neither chris nor i relish the thought of repainting; and i'm just a little too type A to clutter my fridge doors. (my kitchen, pre-remodel, is cramped enough as it is. the last thing i need is 100 sheets of paper decorating the biggest appliance in the room.)

i originally suggested door frames, until we got tired of the sound of paper flapping whenever we entered or exited every room in the house. (and you know my dislike of clutter.) so then we moved to the playroom windows, until we couldn't see through them. and then i finally suggested that they use their bedroom doors -- conveniently located on the second floor where no one but us would see them -- and it is there that they now reside. we've recently had to implement a rule: when one goes up, one must come down. (spinning wheel's got to go round ...)

the most ironic thing about all this is that while susanna likes to mix up her subject matter, going from princesses one day to rainbows the next, liam's focus is always the same. it might be football, or tennis, or basketball, but every single last drawing is one of a sports game. and they all have the following characteristics: there are two boys, liam and an opponent. every opponent is named, but never with a name of anyone he knows. liam is smiling. his opponent is frowning. labels are atop everything, including the obvious (i.e., "ball", "hat", "racket".) the score is written at the top. and liam is always, always the victor. so the irony is that he continues to create drawings that are almost exact replicas of the 127 drawings he's created before, and then spends an extraordinary amount of time mulling over which one to remove to provide space for a new one to go up. when they're just about the same darn thing.

i titled this one Ping Pong Perfection. notice the details: the score (liam 3, al 0), the raw emotion shown on the faces, and how every single aspect is labeled.

i suppose if i were a truly loving, doting mother, i would save all of these treasures and store them away for when he becomes the next monet and i can sell them on ebay for millions of dollars. but i don't. therefore the most valuable lesson i've learned in all of this: discarded artwork should only be placed in the trash if the liner is going to be immediately cinched and taken out to the garbage. otherwise, be prepared to issue a response such as this: "sweetheart, i have no idea how that beautiful picture of you winning the football game against harry 28 to 10 wound up underneath that raw chicken. so sorry about that!"

stay tuned for some actual real artwork i'll share in a future post (once i get around to taking the photos) ... their oil portraits have finally arrived, are framed, and hanging in our dining room. but until then, feel free to ooh and aah over the gallery of our artist-in-residence below.

(and if any of these catches your eye, a small processing fee plus shipping and handling will get you a liam mann original on your bedroom door in no time. just let me know.)

wordless wednesday

2011-01-12T21:23:00.000-05:00

here's the video i mentioned in yesterday's post. they were all thrilled to be out in the white stuff -- chris, susanna, liam, and even super. especially super.

at a loss

2011-01-11T20:49:00.000-05:00

unlike the rest of the east coast, here in raleigh we didn't get snow in the most recent storm. which suits me fine; i just need one good snowfall per winter and am more than satisfied. however, we were saddled with ice. lots and lots of ice. and i don't care how you look at it, there is absolutely nothing at all positive about ice.

on a very somber note, my dear friend erin, who was one of my closest friends in asheville -- i'm talking about the very first person i ever met when we moved there, someone who was with me in book club, two supper clubs, junior league, bunko, and playgroup; who was my i'm-in-the-middle-of-a-crisis-please-come-help-me friend, baby shower thrower, farewell party hoster ... that kind of friend -- lost her mom because of this recent storm. her mom, who had recently battled breast cancer and had emerged victorious, went out for a walk with her husband of 40+ years on monday. she slipped on some ice, fell, and started to have vision problems. hours later, she was declared braindead.

it's all i've been able to focus on these past few days. how quickly your world can be turned upside down. in one second. doing one normal activity. on one pretty average day in january. i think about this, over and over again, as i read my Bible passages for the day. we can never know what the future holds -- or how long that future here on earth may be. please keep erin and her family, now in kingsport as they prepare for a saturday funeral, in your prayers.

i actually started out this post to share a video of liam and susanna sledding back when we actually had some snow (and not ice) on the ground. but my thoughts led me elsewhere. perhaps tomorrow. until then, i sit and reflect. and ponder. and study. and pray.