The State of Things: A List

Recent conversations with Jemma:

Looking at a photo on the wall at Annie's piano lesson with Miss Jody:

J: "Who is that man?"
Me: "You know him. Who do you think it is?"
J: "Oh, I know! Mr. Jody!"


Eating breakfast this morning:

J: "I'm not in a hurry for college to get here!"
Me: "What? No, no hurry for you to go to college. Someday."
J: "I want to live here with you forever."
Me: "Oh, when you're eighteen and nineteen, you'll want to live with your friends."
J: "How many rooms are there?"
Me: "Where? At college?"
J: "Yes. For sleeping."
Me: "Oh, hundreds or thousands. It depends on how big the college is."
J: "Are there pink ones? I hope there are some pink ones."

*****

Things the kittens have eaten or tried to eat:

-cream cheese
-butter
-chicken noodle soup
-homemade dulce de leche
-brownies
-oatmeal
-Boursin cheese
-peanut butter
-carrots

*****

Times that Annie has had her seat moved in the classroom since the beginning of the school year: Three.

I assume we'll be hearing about that at conferences . . .

*****

What I spend my time doing, now that the girls are in school all day:

-getting groceries
-cleaning the litter box
-working out
-making food

*****

 Things I thought I would do while the girls were in school all day that I basically never do:

-luxuriate with a book and a coffee in my house
-keep a cleaner house
-write
-nap

*****

I have purchased a single thing ever from Restoration Hardware, and that was an end table on clearance about two or three years ago. But now they send me their ENORMOUS, RIDICULOUS catalogs on a regular basis. I need to make it stop. THREE of the behemoths came yesterday, and it is enough to make me join the Sierra Club. Restoration Hardware: Think of the trees! We have this new thing called The Internet where you can show your overpriced items without killing all the trees in North America!

*****

What I want for Christmas:

a DSLR camera
cute boots
every candle in Anthropologie

fin.

My Very Favorite Writing

I think that if I could freeze my children at any ages they've been so far, I'd pick either 18-24 months (so cute! such chubby cheeks and squeaky voices! and they haven't started saying 'no' too much yet!) and kindergarten. The writing and drawing skills from the kindergarten stage are particularly my favorite, so it is no surprise that I adore every single thing Jemma brings home these days. I love the inventive spelling, the backwards letters, and the scrappy little drawings so much that it's hard to part with any of them, though I do guiltily sneak a fair amount of them into the recycling bin during the day when she's at school. I try to photograph some of my favorites, though. To wit:

I like strawberries. I like cherries. (Other things she "licked" during that stage included friends, donuts, and her family.)

"Me and my family." Awwwww.

A recent self-directed art project with stickers and the most adorable spellings of Halloween words ever.

Speaking of hilarious and adorable writing, Jason and I volunteered in Annie's classroom to help with an oil spill simulation, and this is the thank-you note she wrote us a couple of days later:

That's a keeper, for sure.

Good Things, Fall 2012

No installment of Good Things since July?!? Let's remedy that:

One last swim at the outdoor pool

Buddies since birth enjoying ice cream together

Slingshotting into Lake Michigan

Dunes on a Sunday afternoon

Reading as you walk down the sidewalk (and your sister  . . . pretends to be a duck)

Vacation

Checking out the kindergarten classroom

If you have to go to soccer practice, you might as well show up with some style

Lost-teeth twins!

Having a leeeetle trouble adjusting to the world post-cottage, post-nap

First! Day! of! School!

 . . . and coming out happy at the end of the first day.

Saturday mornings are for soccer.

Getting fancy for my cousin's wedding.

Turning 8 with a chocolate cake and your cousins over.

A glorious college girls' weekend brunch . . .

 . . . and cocktail hour on the lake.

Hilarious possible kitten names.

Snuggling with those kittens.

ArtPrize!

Annie, learning to use a sharp knife to make applesauce.

Downtown with friends on a Friday night, post-pizza, pre-art exhibits.

Lights in the Night, the best reenactment of Tangled you could hope for.

Sleepovers with buddies.

More Artprize . . .

 . . . and more . . .

 . . . and more.

A lucky, luxurious lunch with my husband (on a weekday!)

We knew it would come to this.

Spider swinging with MC.

Prevailing in 39 degrees and rain to win the soccer game.

Annie's absurd arm strength (she did at least 15). (I can do zero.)

Reading with grandparents.

Dreaming about summer 2013!

Read Elsewhere: Lovers Vs. Fighters; They Grow Up; Cell Phones

A smattering of interesting tidbits seen and heard lately:

:: From "I'm a Lover, Not a Fighter" by Shauna Niequist:

"I know that controversy is currency. But I think it’s worth asking about who you’re taking down, in the hopes that your snark and wit will go viral. I think it's worth asking about what happens over time to your insides when you decide to be a hater, when you decide to be the police of the internet, crusading for something or other.

There are enough haters. There always will be.

And right at the same time, there will always be enough beauty, enough hope, enough good, if we decide to be people who are always on the lookout for it. I want to use my voice to bring light and hope and beauty. I want to search for what’s good, and shout about that.

When I get all wound up--when someone trashes someone I love and I want to get into the fight, when I disagree so vehemently that I want to use all caps to illustrate my point, when someone's political views make me insane, I remember my rule, that I've committed to love, to being a voice for love and goodness.

It's especially hard work during election season, but if we're going to make it through the fall with relationships intact, maybe we should all think about being lovers instead of fighters."

:: From All & Sundry's "It All Vanishes:"

"I finished Rick Bragg’s The Prince of Frogtown last night. It’s a memoir inspired by Bragg’s relationship with his ten-year-old stepson, and towards the end, he writes,

The little boy started to fade, just like we left him in the sun too long. (…) He had been a ragamuffin, hurled into space by the seat of his pants. Suddenly, he shopped for shirts, and worried about his hair. He got too heavy to throw. (…) He turned twelve, then thirteen, and then the little boy just disappeared.

Just when you start to get used to it, to not minding it so much, it all vanishes, and the little boy you launched in the air stands at your shoulders like a man, and when you turn to say something you find yourself looking right into his eyes.He is not helpless, not needy.He is everything I rushed him to be.

Do you know how sometimes you read something, and it’s like the air in the room grows heavy? Like something you can touch, like you’re held fast by the words. I felt that way, last night. My god."

:: Moosh In Indy's "She Said: Kids and Cell Phones:"

"Oh, our generation is going to be a rich one when it comes to such arguments. Gone are the “I walked uphill to school both ways in six feet of snow with no shoes” arguments and here are the  “I made it to a job interview without google maps, turn by turn directions or a phone in my pocket, in my day, if we told someone we were going to be somewhere, WE SHOWED UP!”"

Sixteen Years On

At about this moment in 1996, Jason and I were on our first date. Actually, by this time, he was probably dropping me off in front of my dorm then pulling away in his gray Honda Civic that was missing a passenger-side rearview mirror. He made a mix tape for the date (though he didn't tell me at the time) so that he could impress me with his great taste in music while we drove to Grand Rapids and back. I can't remember a single song on the tape, but I bet he could.

Today (many many years later), it's been packing lunches and making dinner, piano lessons and math test review, kindergarten sight words and paying bills, grocery shopping and working out, haircuts and watering window boxes. No mix tape, just the sound of the dishwasher humming away, the crickets out the open window, the kitties romping around the house to fight over a milk jug ring, the television on in the living room.

(We got kitties on Saturday - two tabby brothers who have already stolen our hearts. What can we say? Our children finally broke us.)

Sixteen years later, it's less glamorous and heart-fluttery, that's for sure, but it's more solid and comforting, too. I love these ordinary days. I wouldn't trade them, not even the kitty litter.

Day In the Life, September 2012

Little snapshots of our day today, minus the two meetings I went to at school (because Instagramming photos of myself at the PTA meeting and the 3rd grade Parent Information Night would have certainly seemed creepy and odd):