Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Lullabies
Nothing on earth makes me feel more mom-ish than being able to sooth my crying child by wrapping her in a cuddle in our "big blue chair" and sing to her to calm her down. Feeling her sobs slow down while her head is tucked under my chin, feeling her breathing slowly return to normal while she cuddles up while I sing "The stars are out, the moon is out..." - that's what being a mom is all about. My kiddo is growing up so quickly - I treasure these little moments where I still have the power to soothe her. I pray that I'll be able to retain some of that ability to make things better, to be someone she always turns to when she is troubled.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Friday 3/26/10, take 2
So today, after we went to the great Tanganyika Wildlife Center, L and I grabbed some fast food for lunch. McDonald's for L, since they currently have toys from the movie "How to Train Your Dragon" and my kid is dragon obsessed. She's been a dragon fanatic for years, so this movie is right up her alley. I think that we are going to go see it tomorrow and she's terribly excited. Last weekend, at Wal-Mart, we saw that they have stuffed animal dragons from the movie. That whole concept is akin to the holy Mecca for L - "stuffed animal" and "dragon" squashed together - life just doesn't get any better than that. Has she read the books? No. She professes to not realizing that the books existed...although I've brought them home to her before and she chose not to read them. At any rate, the movie has spiked her interest, which I guess is the best possible outcome. She is also supposed to be reading the Little House on the Prairie books as research for her gifted project, so I guess we'll see how that shakes out...
At any rate - back to the original story. We ate fast food, making 2 stops because I am anti-McDonald's for no apparent reason, but I do adore a specific chicken sandwich at Burger King, and lucky for me, a Burger King was next door the the Micky D's. So we ate our junky food and then L asked what else we could do. Our trip to Tanganyika was significantly shorter than we had originally anticipated - 2 hours, rather than the 3 or 4 we thought we might spend there - because it was stinkin' WINDY! The sun was out, it was sparkly-springy, probably would have been an outstanding day, if it weren't for that darn wind. The whip-your-hair-into-tornadic-tangles sort of wind. Unpleasant. So we visited the animals and split, with promises to return on a day with less offensive weather.
After searching the GPS for interesting things to do in the area - ("Cowtown? Nope - it's outside, and we just escaped that wind." "Art museum? Nope - not open today.") we decided to go to Old Navy. L has recently become significantly more interested in fashion, and in her own fashion in particular. So off to Old Navy we trotted, with visions of trying on clothes floating through our heads. I grabbed a couple pairs of jeans and then was tugged to the girls' section. L found about 100 things that she wanted to try on, which we narrowed down to about 20. Thank goodness there was no employee at the dressing rooms, or we would have had to make who-knows-how-many trips to the cart to try on our 6-items-at-a-time. Anyhow, to keep events in line with pretty much every shopping trip I've had since becoming a mother, nothing I tried on made me fall in love, and pretty much everything L tried on was super cute on her. I'm going to generalize and say that everything looks cute when you're her age, perhaps. Anyhow, she had chosen 2 specific types of jeans that she wanted to try on - flares and skinny-legs. I have been the "buy-the-jeans-at-Target" type of mom, where I get what looks reasonably cute and has an adjustable waist. My sins of omission are being pointed out to me now, by my child who has now discovered that Old Navy sells flares and skinny leg jeans. Which are "SO CUTE". And they are. She tried them on, and the expression on her face was priceless to me - so awed, so mature - "Mom, look at these! I've never tried on anything like this before and look how cute they are!" It immediately brought back that desire I remember feeling to fit in with what the other kids had, which sometimes was feasible and sometimes not. It's hard for me to have perspective about what's important here - is it important to have what the other kids have (within reason) to feel like part of the group? Is it important to learn about being an individual? Is this the way to teach that lesson? I can't imagine that she likes the jeans just for the sake of cuteness, but rather that she likes what they stand for. Ugh - I don't want to hyper-analyze my 3rd grader's every move, either. At any rate, we now own the jeans - one pair of flares and one pair of skinny-legs. And my thoughtful kiddo pointed out that they are both a little on the long side, and she'll be able to wear them all summer AND to school in the fall. :)
So after the shopping expedition, we went to Cold Stone Creamery for decadent ice cream. Ahhh, indulgence. I had amazing berry sorbet and L had - get this - blueberry muffin flavored ice cream with white chocolate chips. She ate about 1/8 of it. Then she asked me to remind her not to get it again. So, note to L in the future - no more blueberry muffin ice cream!
L and I made cake tonight - this would be after Stuart fell asleep on the couch - homemade applesauce spice cake. Actually, L started helping and then decided that she wanted some applesauce to eat, and absconded to the other room with a plate and the leftover applesauce. Anyhow, it turned out to be an amazing, easy cake - we'll be making it again. A dense cake with raisins in it, with a little powdered sugar sprinkled over the top instead of frosting. Yum...it's what L and I had before bed. As you can see, we have thrown nutritional monitoring out the window during spring break. We're living like indulgent, live-in-the-moment sorts this week.
My dog appears to be having some sort of mini-meltdown outside - I can hear her maniacally scratching in her doghouse, and my hubby has been asleep on the couch for 3 hours, so I suppose I'll go calm the dog.
At any rate - back to the original story. We ate fast food, making 2 stops because I am anti-McDonald's for no apparent reason, but I do adore a specific chicken sandwich at Burger King, and lucky for me, a Burger King was next door the the Micky D's. So we ate our junky food and then L asked what else we could do. Our trip to Tanganyika was significantly shorter than we had originally anticipated - 2 hours, rather than the 3 or 4 we thought we might spend there - because it was stinkin' WINDY! The sun was out, it was sparkly-springy, probably would have been an outstanding day, if it weren't for that darn wind. The whip-your-hair-into-tornadic-tangles sort of wind. Unpleasant. So we visited the animals and split, with promises to return on a day with less offensive weather.
After searching the GPS for interesting things to do in the area - ("Cowtown? Nope - it's outside, and we just escaped that wind." "Art museum? Nope - not open today.") we decided to go to Old Navy. L has recently become significantly more interested in fashion, and in her own fashion in particular. So off to Old Navy we trotted, with visions of trying on clothes floating through our heads. I grabbed a couple pairs of jeans and then was tugged to the girls' section. L found about 100 things that she wanted to try on, which we narrowed down to about 20. Thank goodness there was no employee at the dressing rooms, or we would have had to make who-knows-how-many trips to the cart to try on our 6-items-at-a-time. Anyhow, to keep events in line with pretty much every shopping trip I've had since becoming a mother, nothing I tried on made me fall in love, and pretty much everything L tried on was super cute on her. I'm going to generalize and say that everything looks cute when you're her age, perhaps. Anyhow, she had chosen 2 specific types of jeans that she wanted to try on - flares and skinny-legs. I have been the "buy-the-jeans-at-Target" type of mom, where I get what looks reasonably cute and has an adjustable waist. My sins of omission are being pointed out to me now, by my child who has now discovered that Old Navy sells flares and skinny leg jeans. Which are "SO CUTE". And they are. She tried them on, and the expression on her face was priceless to me - so awed, so mature - "Mom, look at these! I've never tried on anything like this before and look how cute they are!" It immediately brought back that desire I remember feeling to fit in with what the other kids had, which sometimes was feasible and sometimes not. It's hard for me to have perspective about what's important here - is it important to have what the other kids have (within reason) to feel like part of the group? Is it important to learn about being an individual? Is this the way to teach that lesson? I can't imagine that she likes the jeans just for the sake of cuteness, but rather that she likes what they stand for. Ugh - I don't want to hyper-analyze my 3rd grader's every move, either. At any rate, we now own the jeans - one pair of flares and one pair of skinny-legs. And my thoughtful kiddo pointed out that they are both a little on the long side, and she'll be able to wear them all summer AND to school in the fall. :)
So after the shopping expedition, we went to Cold Stone Creamery for decadent ice cream. Ahhh, indulgence. I had amazing berry sorbet and L had - get this - blueberry muffin flavored ice cream with white chocolate chips. She ate about 1/8 of it. Then she asked me to remind her not to get it again. So, note to L in the future - no more blueberry muffin ice cream!
L and I made cake tonight - this would be after Stuart fell asleep on the couch - homemade applesauce spice cake. Actually, L started helping and then decided that she wanted some applesauce to eat, and absconded to the other room with a plate and the leftover applesauce. Anyhow, it turned out to be an amazing, easy cake - we'll be making it again. A dense cake with raisins in it, with a little powdered sugar sprinkled over the top instead of frosting. Yum...it's what L and I had before bed. As you can see, we have thrown nutritional monitoring out the window during spring break. We're living like indulgent, live-in-the-moment sorts this week.
My dog appears to be having some sort of mini-meltdown outside - I can hear her maniacally scratching in her doghouse, and my hubby has been asleep on the couch for 3 hours, so I suppose I'll go calm the dog.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Today is the last weekday of spring break. I was going to call it a bittersweet day, but I can't actually find the sweet in it - just bitter. I could happily partake of another week or two of time home with my family, taking life at a slower pace. So far this week, L and I have cleaned house, cleaned out closets, gone to the Hutchinson Zoo, the Wichita Zoo, and today we went to Tanganyika Wildlife Park in Goddard. We have taken the cousins to see "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" movie, and played at Grandpa & Grandma's house. I feel like the week has flown by, and I'm sad that I don't feel more refreshed from the time off. However, we had an amazing time at Tanganyika today. I was upset because my camera's batteries ran out not long after we got there. I had brought along some new, freshly charged batteries, and for some reason they didn't work. And the gift shop was out of AA batteries. So no photos. However, I realized how much more "in the moment" I was during our day when I wasn't photographing - much more invested in the activities. Life lesson. We got to hand-feed lemurs, feed the giraffes little pellets (although they wouldn't let us pet them!), feed the lorikeets little containers of juice (L got nipped by one!) and L fed the rabbits, too. We saw mama gibbons with tiny babies, baby penguins, red pandas, and, my personal favorite, the clouded leopard. If spring break has to end, this was a good note to go out on.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)