I Call Times!

my way isn’t the only way

Not only am I learning to let go but I am also still learning to let my kids do things their own way. Today I had the perfect opportunity to practice.

Last year, my daughter asked me if she could paint her room. Since I believe kids have very few spaces that are unregulated and in which they can express themselves fully, I try hard to let them keep their rooms the way they want. I said yes, and she did - a bright blue and lime green color. She painted for a few days and then stopped leaving just two small walls of her room unpainted. It drove me a little crazy to have the project undone but it is her room and so I let it go.

Today she decided to finish the job and in the process grabbed a can of Pastel Sage paint from the garage. It was left over from some project we can’t remember. She came in and asked if it was the same color I had originally picked out for the hallway. It wasn’t the same but it was close. She then asked if she could paint the hallway with it. Ummmm, well the hallway did need a fresh coat of paint. It was currently a flat off white and since the boys room is at the end of room, all you could see was their dirty hand and finger prints. But, ummm it is the hallway, outside of her room and ummmmm, well I don’t know.

Then I remembered reading this post over at Pass the Torch and thinking when I did so that I needed to remember to find opportunities for my kids to do things on their own. This was the perfect opportunity. She could paint he hallway and if she totally screwed it up, well then we could just paint over it. That is the beauty of paint right?

She got started with a drop cloth that I thought was too small and poured what I thought was too much paint in to the tray and she even started on the middle of the wall instead of cutting in around the edges and corners first. She didn’t use painter’s tape and she didn’t remove the light switch and outlet covers but just used a brush to paint around them. This is not the way I would have done this AT ALL!

But I stayed out of it and paint the hallway she did and you know what? She did a fantastic job! Dont you think?

We're ignoring the boys' door that needs painting and the carpet in serious need of cleaning mmkay? yeah...

And she did it her way! The hallway looks brighter and cleaner and the best part is that the paint she used is a semi gloss which means IT CAN BE CLEANED! No more dirty finger prints Thanks Kelley for helping me remember that my way isn’t always the only way and that there are plenty of ways to let my kids learn and to empower them.

what? i can’t hear you!

I was trying to think of a cute introduction to this post but let’s just cut to the chase shall we?

My husband snores and not in the sort of quiet it makes you giggle because he fell asleep in a big comfy chair kind of snore. It’s more like a hibernating bear kind of snore. (Hi sweetie, I love you). It is not every night and it isn’t always so bad but I needed a solution for the times when it is.

In asking around, I found that I am not the only one who’s husband serenades us in the middle of the night. My bestest best tries to get her sweetie to roll over, another friend just wakes her husband up enough to stop the snoring and tries to go back to sleep before it starts again. Some one suggested that I use head phones and listen to music to drown out the snoring. A few other ladies, including my mom, just go sleep in another room.

Jerr is hard to wake up even just enough to get him to roll over a bit. Most headphones hurt my ears and the music keeps me up just as much as the snoring. More importantly, I don’t want to sleep in another room. My couch is really comfy and I’ll take naps there occasionally but I don’t want to sleep on it. I just don’t. I love my room. I love my bed. I love Jerry and I love sleeping and waking up next to him each day.

I hemmed and hawwed for a few months until I finally decided to give earplugs a try. I was so hestant to use them because I was afraid they would cut out too much noise. What if one of my kids needed me? What is there was an emergency phone cal in the middle of the night? What if I didn’t hear my alarm in the morning? All of these concerns have been put to rest. The earplugs dont’ drown out all the noise, I can still hear my alarm and the phone and the kids but it reduces the noise next to me to allow me to easily go back to sleep.

They work so well I am considering using them in other situations:

• When the kids are arguing and want me to settle it? What? I can’t hear you!
• When the home phone is ringing and I know it’s not for me (it is NEVER for me)? What? I can’t hear you!
• When the kids want me to pay them the allowance I owe them NOW! What? I can’t hear you!
• How bout when I’m getting the ‘That’s so unfair!!’ speech? What? I can’t hear you!
• Or if my sweetheart wants to tell me an inappropriate joke? What? I can’t hear you!
• And that 15 page term paper my professor just assigned? What? I can’t hear you!

I’m thinking these things are going to come in really really handy

What would you tune out if you could?

the greatest invention

You know the saying “It’s the greatest invention since sliced bread!”. Have you ever really thought about it? No? Really? Never? Hmmm - would you think me weird if I have? Wait don’t answer that.

I actually have thought about that saying recently, quite often in fact. What the big deal with sliced bread? How did it become the bench mark for future inventions because really it’s just sliced bread?

Did you know that sliced bread came around in 1928? In that same year the world was introduced to the first home pregnancy test, antibiotics and bubble gum. How did sliced bread beat all of those? Clearly bubble gum was the best invention that year

About 6 months ago, I started making my own bread. I got tired of looking at tall of the ingredients on a store bought loaf that I couldn’t pronounce and I also got tired of having to pay around $4 for a loaf with ingredients I could pronounce.

Making bread is not very difficult but it is very time consuming. This is why I love my bread machine. It takes just as long to knead, rise, knead, rise and then bake my bread but the machine does all the work for me. I just dump the ingredients in, turn it on and let it go. I don’t even have to be home while it works. I loves it very much!

What I don’t love so much is trying to slice the loaves of bread. I am not just making bread to serve with dinner but I am making bread for all the sandwiches my three kids make. People, we go through A LOT of bread and I have absolutely NO skills when it comes to slicing bread. Who knew slicing bread could prove to be so difficult? These kids have had to deal with the funkiest slices of bread that ever existed

So you see, I get why the greatest invention at one time was sliced bread. I really really get it and I cannot tell you how happy I was to finally have this little beauty arrive on my doorstep.

photo from Amazon

The kids were happy too. They cheered when I told them what it was. I’m telling you, those were some really funky slices of bread.

connecting the dots

The strangest thing happened to me today. Oprah would have called it an “A - ha! Moment”

My daughter is 14 and starting High School this year. I don’t want to talk about - I’d like to live in Denial just a tad bit longer mmkay?

We are still undecided about whether or not she will stay at the small (grade k-10 w/ 220 student) charter school she attended last year or if she will attend the big (grade 9-12 w/ 3500 sudent) high school. We are leaning toward the big school and if there is a spot for her when the office reopens next week, this is most likely where she will attend.

This high school is only about a mile away from our home and as we drove by the other day, my girl asked me if I thought she might be able to ride her bike to school? I told her yes. The reality is that my school schedule, her school schedule and the boy’s school schedule overlap leaving them to have to walk home.

So today, she decided to see how long and how hard this bike ride would be - it’s downhill from our house and UP HILL the whole way home. She and the oldest boy (he’s 12) took off just a few minutes ago on their bikes. They were so excited! Me? I am totally freaked out!

One thing I struggle with as a parent is letting go. It is really about the fact that I get so nervous and scared when they are out of my sight. I know this is normal but I have some serious issues with it - more than normal. As soon as they walked out the door, my heart rate increased a mile a minute, i got a knot in my stomach and my palms started sweating. She has a cell phone and was to call when she got there but what was I going to do for the 15-20min it takes them to get there?

Well apparently, I was going to eat. I immediately craved something sweet. I grabbed a diet coke but I was still having serious cravings and then I noticed the tub of chocolate frosting sitting in the cupboard. This is when the light went on for me.

I know I am an emotional eater but I never ever realize. A-ha! When I get worried I eat…and I caught myself red handed this time. I am glad to say that I did not open the frosting. i just took a big swig of my soda and waited for my daughter to call. She did.

They made it home safe and I learned a lesson about myself.

book review “The Sunflower”

From the back cover:  In the wake of personal tragedy, two people meet on a humanitarian mission in Peru.  Christine is a shy, unadventurous woman whole fiance broke off the engagement only a week before the wedding, and Paul is a former emergency room doctor whose glamorous lifestyle, stellar reputation and a beautiful finace are  cruelly snatched form him one fateful, snowy Christmas Eve.  Deep in the Amazon jungle, against a backdrop of poverty and heartbreak, they must confront their deepest fears and, together, learn to trust and love again.

I originally picked up this book because of the title.  I love sunflowers.  I do this often, choose a book based only on the title or the cover picture.  I picked this off my book shelf two days ago because I was looking for an easy read and that is just what I got.  I don’t mean that this is a fluff book but I mean to say that the story flowed well and I didn’t have to look up a word in the dictionary every other page.

This story reminds me of one of those made for Hallmark made for TV movies: a little cheesy, you know where the story is going, happy when it goes there and when it’s over, you’re happy you watched it.  This was the perfect book for me to read while sitting by the pool with the kids, at the orthodontist office while waiting for my daughter, and during the commercials while watching the Olympics.