Juggling Life

Birthday Post: Abbreviated Due to my Pulling my Hair Out from Way too much to Do!

                                My Birthday Girl and her brand new Snuggie

Sibling Love and Support: She supported him by attending his first CIF (California Interscholastic Federation) playoff game. Scripps 6, Vista 3—Woot! She showed her love by asking him (okay, there was some maternal influence) to pose with her and her birthday cake.

After a birthday shopping spree (jeans, boots, jacket, bag) and lunch out it was on to the water polo game, then out to our favorite Italian restaurant for dinner. Danger Boy’s best friend, DB2, joined us and shared his opinion that the group IQ is lowered several points for every additional girl in the group. I have no comment.

The actual party is Saturday tonight. I will give you my thoughts on how that is going to go tomorrow (let’s just say Facebook may be a factor)—and probably a post-mortem on Monday as well!

Friends in Need

Today is Social Butterfly’s 15th birthday. I was going to write a birthday post, but when another blogger asked me if I would participate in posting this message about Friends of Maddie I knew SB’s birthday post could wait.

You see, November 11 was Maddie’s birthday. That connection she has to my own healthy and happy daughter really resonated with me. I am so sorry that Maddie’s parents will never get to see their daughter’s 15th birthday. I am full of admiration for what they have done with their grief.

I don't think there are too many people reading this who didn't have their
heart broken on April 7th of this year. That's the day we learned that
Madeline Alice Spohr, whom we all knew as Maddie from The Sporhrs are Multiplying, was suddenly taken from her parents, Heather and Mike, when a respiratory infection coupled with a collapsed lung was more than her 17-month-old body could fight. Thousands of people across the country mourned with Heather and Mike, and thousands came to their support by donating to the March of Dimes in Maddie's memory.

Since then, the Spohrs, along with family and friends, have created Friends of Maddie , a fund dedicated to supporting families of critically ill or prematurely-born infants during their stay in the Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) with supplies, help finding temporary lodging (because the NICU isn't always within commuting distance of home), and by creating a network of support.

Friends of Maddie uses your donation to put together Support Packs for families who find themselves overwhelmed with the care of an at-risk
newborn. The packs include items such as reusable water bottles, snack bars,
tissues, mints, and most importantly, a tri-fold binder with a note pad and
accordion file to keep track of paperwork.

"We're hopeful it will make it at a little easier for parents to keep track
of everything," Heather says."You get SO many papers, business cards, etc.,
every day, and it's hard to keep track of everything." She should know, she lived the experience. Maddie's sixty-eight-day stay in the NICU  is chronicled on Heather's blog and her husband Mike's blog as well.

Readers across the country followed every setback and every victory. What message would she like to pass on to parents in the same situation?

"Patience. Take things a day at a time and live in the moment. Don't look
down the road or things will get REALLY scary and overwhelming," shared
Heather.

The reaction to the packs has been terrific, according to Heather, "We've
been getting a FANTASTIC response from everyone! We weren't expecting such a big response so we are really behind in getting back to everyone, but it's a
good problem to have!"

By now, you are all wondering how you can help, right? I knew it. You people
rock. Your options:
*      Donate!   I know, the economy is bad right now, but every little bit helps. Or...
*       Let your local NICU know about Friends of Maddie, or...
*       Do you work for a company that might bring a valuable service to
NICU parents? Contact FoM! 
Or...
*       Just spread the word! Write a blog post! Send out a tweet! Y'all
know how this works!

Mike and Heather's loss is unimaginable. In spite of their grief, they have
found a way to pay forward all the love poured out from thousands of hearts
across the internet.

PTVD: Post-traumatic video disorder

You haven’t had fun until you’ve had someone videotape you doing your job for an hour and 15 minutes and then had to comb through the video for the 20 minutes that highlights you at your best.

This would be the video I’m submitting for the California Teacher’s Performance Assessment Task 4: The Culminating Teaching Experience.

When they ask me to evaluate the video they probably are not looking to hear the following:

Pear is a body type. Apple is a body type. How in hell did I get to be both a pear and an apple?!

Cute haircut!

Even though my frames are over a year old I still love them.

I have a facial tic! WTF?!*

 

* The tic is a quick half-smile with the left side of my face. I do it a lot in the video—and yes, I was on the nervous side. I showed the footage to my family and they were all, “Unh-huh. You do that all the time.” According to my husband, I’ve been doing it as long as he has known me, which is since I was 16. I cannot believe I did not know this. My bff maintained she had no idea what I was talking about until I showed her the video—then she said, “Oh! That’s just you.”

The Upside of Illness

You know how when your kids are toddlers you feel a wee bit guilty because it’s actually sort of nice when they’re a little sick? Not super-sick, but a bit down and with the kind of malaise that makes them content to lie in your lap.

Imagine the perverse delight you feel (when you’re not worrying about impending respiratory failure from H1N1) when parental duty and sick teen require that you spend a morning in bed with your oh-so-soon-to-be-15-year old daughter’s head resting on your chest so you can monitor her fever.

Then, after she sleeps away the entire day, you come home from work and the two of you snuggle under the covers on the couch—just like the old days (except back then she wouldn’t be as into The Good Wife or Law and Order as you are).

You know she’s getting better when she starts calling you a weirdo because you can’t help reveling aloud in all the cuddliness!

You know she’s ready to go back to school when she turns the cuddlefest into an all out tickle attack on you. Which is so not a fair fight because she uses her legs to provide separation from the counter-attack and her legs? Are 6 inches longer than yours.

Sick Days and Immature Winners

Social Butterfly came home from school on Monday and slept from 2:30 to 8:30, woke up to complain about how much her head hurt, and then went to bed. She stayed home on Tuesday. I took her temperature every 10 minutes just to make sure this raging headache (she’s not a headache person—she’s an upset stomach person) wasn’t the onset of H1N1.

Tuesday night:

Mr. Fix-it: What did you do today.

SB: Watched Law & Order SVU.

MFI: All day.

SB (Clicking TiVo remote to the USA lineup which shows an entire 24 hours of SVU): All day.

I wrote this on Wednesday. On Friday the fever started. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a mild flu. One thing I never had to worry about as a SAHM was tag-team sick days. I’m just not comfortable leaving her home alone with a fever given all the scary H1N1 stories. I went in to school after my husband’s morning meeting. How DO single parents do it?

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The winners of the Klutz Encyclopedia of Immaturity are . . .

# 4

Um, sadly, I am very mature. The problem is, I live with a 13 yo boy, 11 yo boy, 8 yo boy, 4 yo boy, a baby boy with seriously loud gas from both ends, and a 32 yo boy, er, I mean husband. I NEED this book, if I am ever going to be able to retaliate I am going to need HELP!!!

Posted by: MJ | October 28, 2009 at 08:06 AM

 

#10

I "dance/silly walk" through the living room on a regular basis, just to make my daughter laugh. Or possibly just to make myself laugh.

Posted by: Kelly | October 28, 2009 at 12:54 PM

 

#14

I'm 55 and I still love to play jacks and spin a hula-hoop. Favorites forever!

Posted by: Annie | October 28, 2009 at 06:29 PM

Suburbia: Made for Halloween

Halloween 1997

 

Say what you want about giving up your hipster cred and losing any semblance of cool—suburbia rocks Halloween. Especially if you’re a kid and especially if you’re a kid in a cul-de-sac.

My family has left the prime Halloween years behind—with the youngest of my four children being a high school sophomore, the days of homemade Tinkerbell  and Anakin Skywalker costumes, weighing the candy haul on the bathroom scale and then graphing your assortment for homework are gone for good.

Ahhh, but those were the days.

Our tight-knit cul-de-sac burst with children all within a ten-year age range. It didn’t matter how old you were, there was just the right configuration to make your own little crew, hanging together amidst the great big crew.

We decorated early and garishly. Glow-in-the-dark skeletons hung from trees and children of all ages delighted in the motion-sensitive graveyard scene with the “Boo! Ba-boo-boo-boo!” soundtrack.

In San Diego October 31 is the perfect time for an outdoor block party. Each Halloween I set up the banquet tables, provided the cups and plates and spoons and forks along with some milk and everyone else contributed the food. There was Maggie’s wild rice and potato soup (a perennial favorite—I’m salivating writing about it) and the skeleton crudite tray Heidi always brought. Somebody was sure to bring chili and somebody else corn bread. Of course there was some adult Halloween brew.

The goblins ran wild as we tried to get some non-sugar-based sustenance into them before the trick-or-treating commenced. Soon enough it was dark and time to head out. One parent stayed home to hand out candy and another parent took off. The ten-year age difference among the children didn’t matter—there was a responsible, kind parent heading up every sub-group and you knew your child would return to you safely at the end of the night.

As the years passed the kids started venturing out on their own—the parents weren’t up to running door-to-door for miles in pursuit of maximum candy gathering. And isn’t this why we moved to the suburbs? So our kids could roam freely?

So the parents hung out in my driveway, finishing up the soup and quaffing our Blue Moon ale. The trick-or-treaters from other streets would hit our house and be greeted with 15 bowls of candy and admonitions to take a handful from each.

I think it was three years ago that we had our last potluck. The next year I had a night class and my kids were going to parties anyway. An era had passed. There are still small children here, though not quite the critical mass as back in the day.

Now I see my too-old-for-trick-or-treating-teens off and my husband and I take turns at the door, calling to each other to exclaim over a neighbor child or a particularly cute costume. It’s bittersweet, but I do have the soup recipe and the Blue Moon ale. Besides, if your own kids don’t grow up you’ll never have grandkids and get to do it all over again!

One Shoe, Two Shoe, Black Shoe, Brown Shoe

Full disclosure: There’s a product review imbedded in here!

For a gal that spent most of her life in either flip-flops or tennis shoes, with the occasional cute flat thrown in, I have recently been on the prowl for cute, comfortable shoes that give me some height.

I’m just the height that I can wear petite sizes with flats (petite meaning short—not tiny!) and average sizes with a heel. Plus, I’ve watched enough of Clinton and Stacy to know that I want my pants to be as long as possible to elongate my stubby legs. Hence the need for heels.

Besides needing comfortable shoes because I stand on my feet all day while teaching, I have arthritis in my big left toe—from breaking it a couple of times I presume—so I can’t wear a traditional heel where you put pressure on the front of your foot—I need a platform or clog.

These shoes are made of course, but they don’t come cheap.

These are my current work shoes. Shoe #2 (the black one) is a Born shoe that is like walking on a cloud—though it is not quite the height of fashion. Shoe #3 (the brown one with the lucite heel inset) is a J-41 Adventure shoe that is totally cute, but not like walking on a cloud. Comfortable enough as cute shoes with heels go, but not like walking on a cloud.

I paid a pretty penny or 18,000 for those two pairs of shoes in August. Which is a lot of money when you don’t actually get paid for the work you’re doing, which is why you don’t see a red pair there.

A few weeks ago I got a letter from a company I’d never heard of asking me if I wanted to pick out a pair of shoes and review them. Why yes, I did! The company was Ariat and you can read all about them here if you’d like.

Shoe #1 is the Westlake in Bronze Lustre.

I love the flower detail.

These shoes are terrific—comfortable, sturdy, cute and a very reasonable price for a shoe of this quality. They sell them at Nordstrom among other places and I like them so much that when I actually get a job that pays money I think I’ll pick these babies up.

Making Social Studies Fun: Explorer Graveyard

Tombstones of famous explorers with portraits, maps, routes and bio-poems. We turned off the lights and used a flashlight for the presentations. Instead of applause we did wind whistling through the graveyard. It was a hit.

Halloween 2009: Scream(ing)

Back in the day this was what my little darling, Social Butterfly, looked like on Halloween. There were variations of course—Tink, a witch, a pirate, a fairy, a 50’s girl—but you get the (very darling) picture.

I won’t be the first to mention the trend toward sexy fill-in-the-blank as the ubiquitous costume choice for girls of all ages, but can I just say I am weary, oh-so-weary, from the fight I put up and compromised on this last weekend.

First there was the days long battle about not being able to go to any party if I don’t have the house landline number and talk to the parents first. I am the ONLY MOTHER that makes these ridiculous demands. You know what is mind-boggling about that statement? It’s pretty close to the truth. Shocked doesn’t begin to describe how I feel about how little oversight most of the parents of SB’s friends are providing these days. Dismayed is pretty accurate.

I got the phone number.

Then came the costume battle. I was okay with the American Apparel ice skater dress to be used as party of a fairy costume. Worn with flats. Flats that SB did not buy because she purchased the perfect shoes with her own money. Except I did not agree they were the perfect shoes. In fact, quite the opposite.

The battle raged for hours until there were four other girls in the house getting ready to go to the party. The black leggings she is wearing represent her last-ditch effort to come up with a compromise. And I compromised.

Here’s the part where you parents of little girls decide to move to a farm and home-school. These girls were the conservatively-dressed contingent. Oh yes, they were.

You do not want to see a photo of the Moulin Rouge girls—but the image is etched indelibly in my mind.

Photo Challenge: Green

This week’s photo challenge at the Women’s Colony is the color green. It’s interesting that it is easy to capture “green” green, but very difficult to capture lighter shades of green. They look washed out or grayish. Still, I persevered as best I could.

I knew right away I would use this photo. My husband and I bought this philodendron the week we moved into our first apartment. Over 22 years ago.

Clockwise from top left:

The tree outside my bedroom window.

An olive green square on my quilt.

The soft sage green paint on my bedroom walls.

The cloisonne jewelry box that used to be my mother’s.

The ceramic pears that used to be my mother’s.

That IKEA shower curtain again!