This morning as Richard left for work he asked Cameron to be helpful and good today for Mom, since she still wasn’t feeling great.  Cameron replied:

“Okay Dad, I’ll get a handle on her.”

Richard could leave in peace, knowing I was in capable hands. 

I’ve been ill today.  Mother-in-law to the rescue whisked away my children so I could feel delirious in a quiet home. 

After watching a really heavy movie,  and dwelling on the Holocaust, I needed a distraction.  (What I am about to say after what I just said, might make me one of the most shallow people you know.)

Finally able to sit upright without the room spinning,  I looked on a favorite blog of mine and lo and behold I had been featured.   It is every bloggers dream.  Or, well it was mine at least.  I sent the pictures to the blog’s host weeks ago, and after not seeing them posted I determined it was unworthy. 

You can check it out, it’s nothing new to you, just the dresser I already posted about on here.  But- it is a fun blog to look at so give it a shot if you are into DIY-furniture makeover-home improvements.  It is a very satisfying blog because it highlights the best part of any project, the before and after photos.

Meanwhile, I think I will resume the fetal position and hopefully fall asleep.

One great pleasure of parenthood is introducing your chidlren to the music that you listened to as a kid.  And sometimes when doing so you are delighted to learn the actual names and lyrics of songs that you thought you knew back when.  This can provide great entertainment as in the following example. 

Richard and I both grew up listening and dancing to the Beach Boys.  Before our vacation he downloaded their greatest hits and we played them on the iPod on our way to Cascade. 

Richard: “Put on Barbara Ann.”
song begins
Jo:  “I didn’t know this was called Barbara Ann.  That’s a weird name for a song like this.”
Richard (with puzzled expression): “That is what they are saying. ‘Barbara Ann.'”
Jo: (totally cracking up): “You mean they aren’t saying Bop-a-ram?”

Good times.

Last Saturday I watched and listened as Richard sang along with the BB in falsetto while the boys did their best air guitar.  It was classic.  The kind of thing family home videos are made of.  But I forgot to get out the camera.

Ha! Some break! Go ahead and laugh, sneer, roll your eyes, remove me from your google reader. 

But I just can’t stop these blog posts from composing themselves in my head as I lay in bed at night.  In fact, just now those words typed themselves behind my eyelids.  So I removed myself from my bed and here I am. 

The truth is I have a new approach to blogging.  A non-obligatory, post-as-I-please approach.  I am relieving myself of the pressure I manufactured as I imagined my readers waiting with bated breath for my next post.  It seemed necessary to post as often as possible.

Since we all know that was not the case, that pressure was the product of a delusioned mind, it was pretty easy to relinquish. 

So I’m back, but ready to blog at will.  As much or as little as I darn well please.  

Home again  home again.  We had a nice vacation.  We rented a cabin in Cascade Idaho for five days four nights.  You can rent it too if you like, see here.  The owners were great to work with and I believe in patronizing businesses that provide quality service, so there is my piece on that.

We were lazy, slept late and took afternoon naps.  I completed a 1000 pieced puzzle.  Cameron got his first sliver which was a catastrophic event.  We had picnics on the beach.  Misha was the only one brave enough to get in the lake but she retrieved countless sticks from its chilly waters.  We had a campfire and made smores.  Eli devoured them.  Miriam was out of sorts and did not sleep well.  (Hence the naps.)  We ate dinner on t.v. trays to honor the 60’s/70’s theme of the cabin.  Cameron and Eli made pinecone soup.   Misha never ran away.  I took the boys on a long walk and lost my way for a bit.  Cameron will tell you an exaggerated version of that story should you have the time commitment to hear it. 

It is always hard to return from a vacation, even when you are anxious to be home again.  And of course  I will be doing laundry and cleaning up sand all week.  Oh the sand…

Last night we found ourselves driving through my old neighborhood.  We had all the kids with us and due to circumstances too complicated for an explanation here, we ended up in the subdivision where I lived for approximately fourteen years of my life. 

All the houses seemed smaller, and of course much older.   During those fourteen years we lived in two houses just around the corner from each other.  About a mile from those two houses was a house Richard lived in as a child.  We drove past it too.  Then we drove about another mile down the road to another house Richard lived in during his youth.  All four of these houses are within a couple miles from the two houses our parents currently live in, and we both lived in at various points in our lives.  We mused about this.  Six houses within three miles of eachother and we never met until college. 

Because of the circumstances I referenced above, we were driving my dad’s Explorer.  (If you are reading this Dad, I’ll explain later.)  It is an older car, with only a casette player.  Richard popped in a mix tape of my dad’s.  The songs were popular tunes from years gone by, years where our lives were going on in the very houses we were slowly driving past. 

Ahh fond memories.   I’ve said it many times, but I am a sentimental person and all this nostalgia was making me long for the simpler days of my childhood.  It made me miss the “village” that raised me.  

On that note, I’ll check out for a few days to hopefully create fond memories for my own children.  We are spending a few days at a cabin in Cascade to let our children play with bark and leaves.  

**p.s. this song takes me somewhere serene.

I spent the most entertaining hour of my week on Saturday at the “Bark Park.”  Yeah, that’s right, an off-leash sanctioned canine paradise where dogs can sniff the private parts of other dogs without inhibition. 

All joking aside, it was a delightful experience.  I’m going to make a sweeping generalization here and say that pet owners, specifically dog lovers, are kind, friendly and pleasant people.  I could not believe how just having that one thing in common, we all love our dog, was enough to unite a group of strangers in jovial conversation.  It was similar to that phenomenon of putting a group of women who have never met together in a room.  Assuming they have all had children, get them started on their labor stories and they will be occupied in dialogue for hours. 

Not only was Misha able to be the recipient of much dog socialization, she was patted and admired by the humans as well.  In fact, I think she rather preferred the affection of the people to the other dogs.  One male dog in particular was getting a little too frisky and I was proud of her for putting him in his place with a fierce growl. 

It was a good lesson for me about dogs. They are so much more like us than I realized.  They get excited, shy, nervous, irritated, bored and jealous too. 

If you have a dog I highly recommend you find the nearest puppy park for some quality pet time.

All my life I have heard and read about the glory of motherhood.  I always believed it, of course, but I think it is just now that I’m catching small glimpes of the true glory of motherhood.

My good friend, mother of a three year old and twenty-nine weeks pregnant is spending her Mother’s day in the hospital in pre-term labor. Despite her less than ideal circumstances she still has that expectant mother glow.  She is outstanding.

Outstanding mothers rarely make the history books.  They don’t get thousands of hits on a YouTube video performing their daily mundane tasks.  They don’t grace the cover of popular magazines with bags under their eyes.  They don’t make appearances on Jay Leno because they have cleaned up bodily fluids from carpets, couches and underwear.

But the influence of an oustanding mother is worth something beyond this weeks biggest YouTube hit, the cover of People or todays talk show guest.  I don’t need to say this, because the point is that an outstanding mother isn’t looking for external recognition.

I’m so glad for my outstanding mother.  My mother-in-law is also an outstanding mother, as evidenced by my wonderful husband.  I am grateful for the examples of my sisters who are outstanding mothers.   My sisters-in-law will also, I have no doubt, in due time be outstanding mothers.  And I am grateful lastly for my good friends who are unselfish and outstanding mothers.

And I am ever so thankful today that I can have my shot at being an outstanding mother myself.

Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years!
I am so weary of toil and of tears, . . .
Tired of the hollow, the base, the untrue,
Mother, O mother, my heart calls for you! . . .


Over my heart, in the days that are flown,
No love like mother-love ever has shone; . . .
None like a mother can charm away pain
From the sick soul and the world-weary brain.


Slumber’s soft calms o’er my heavy lids creep;
Rock me to sleep, mother, rock me to sleep!
“Rock Me to Sleep” in The Family Library of Poetry and Song
-William Cullen Bryant

I used to be another one of those people who didn’t have children and judged the parenting styles of those who did.  I swore my child would eat what was placed in front of him or nothing at all.  I assumed that a child could eat anything if they were hungry enough. 

Cameron isn’t too picky and knows what he has to eat to get dessert.  For months now, Eli has been content to go without dessert rather than eat what is placed in front of him.  For awhile I tried to force him to eat but that was when he went through that refuse-to-swallow-and-drool-until-my-mom-loses-it phase.  I’m glad that is over and now I let him eat if he likes and if not, then not.  Richard and I were just sure he would go through life [under our roof] without enjoying the pleasure of dessert. 

But the other night the home teachers brought some treats Eli could not resist.  I put him back at the table and placed his dinner before him.  He seemed determined.  He took one bite, chewed with a pained expression, and swallowed.  The second bite put him over the edge and he started gagging.  I quickly realized that he was on the brink of vomiting and I begged him to swallow, which he did.  I promptly removed the plate from his eye-sight and gave him an alternate meal.

I caved, call me a wimp or a push-over but that is where I draw the line.  Richard and I looked at each other, feeling terrible about making our child eat something that was truly making him feel ill.  And it wasn’t for lack of hunger.  As soon as I set a bowl of applesauce and some sliced cheese in front of him he double fisted the cheese until it was gone and shoveled in the applesauce by the spoonful. 

It looks like I’ll be rethinking yet another parenting strategy I was sure I had figured out.