You Know You Are Getting Old When . . .

Your 5-year-old daughter, while watching Charlie Brown and the Pilgrims turns to you and says, "Daddy were you on the Mayflower?"

:-)

Redecorating - Kid Style

Ever since I have known Bill (18+ years now) he has never held a traditional "9-5" type job. He has always worked odd hours, weekends, nights and 24-hour shifts. Being the fiercely independent female that I am this has rarely bothered me and in fact it seems quite normal to me as I know nothing different. Most weekends Bill is at work for 24 hours on either Saturday or Sunday. I usually like to try to take that day to clean, de-clutter and do laundry. That way when Bill returns home he, with luck, returns to one that is neat, orderly and clean. This weekend was no different as Bill worked yesterday.

I was a woman on a mission yesterday. In only a little over a week's time the amount of paper (school things, receipts, bills, junk mail not gone through and newspapers) that had piled up in our kitchen, dining room and living room was frightening. I will say with Anna in Kindergarten our school papers have easily doubled. And because the kids are at two different schools this means a lot of duplicated pieces of school/district related announcements. Ugh. I spent quite a bit of time sorting, recycling and filing. Let's just say I am convinced that in some way paper is a close cousin to bunnies given the way it seems to "reproduce."

After getting the main area of the house in shape I headed back to the bedrooms for clean sheets and de-cluttering. I started out with Ryan's room. Upon stripping his bed I was horrified to look along the side next to the wall and see nothing but a sea of food wrappers! They consisted of Halloween candy, yogurt stick wrappers, beef jerky wrappers and granola bar wrappers (along with partially eaten bars). I had to use a broom to get everything out. Why oh why do boys do things like this? I told him he is darn lucky that he didn't have bugs or mice living with him in there. Yuck!

I moved on to Anna's room and it was here I discovered the first "redecorating." It seems Anna had added some colors to her pink wall next to her bed. Then something on the floor caught my eye and I noticed she now had green marks on her blue carpet (I should note Anna's bedroom had blue carpet when we bought the house and since it was in perfectly good shape we couldn't see replacing it until later . . . now I am very glad we didn't). I don't know if it is marker or ink from her stamper ink pads and when asked she gave me a blank look which I equated to, "If I just say nothing what can mom possibly do?"

After my bedroom it was time to tackle the vacuuming in the living room/dining room and kitchen. As I was vacuuming the tan carpet in the living/dining room my eyes were first drawn to blue on the carpet in quite a large area. Lots of blue spots. Upon closer inspection I noticed sparkly glitter in the blue color. How lovely. Ryan claims it was from Anna's latest art project, Anna pleaded the fifth. However not long after she quickly pointed out to me the red smiley face that was drawn on the carpet near the dining room table. This was followed by "Ryan did it." I still haven't solved that one.

I don't know what makes me more frustrated at this point. The fact that Bill and I bust our butts at our jobs so we can have this house (a house I might add that is not a fancy one, it is a rather ordinary house but still it is OURS) and that Ryan and Anna seem to have so little disregard for it. Or the fact that how in the heck did I miss all this? I am sure it didn't miraculously appear overnight on Friday night so just how long has this stuff been here? I would love to redecorate, would love new carpet but with the economy as it is this will not be happening any time soon.

So I guess I shall have to live with the "redecorating - kid style." Big sigh. . . .

Beaming With Pride

Today while I was at work my cell phone rang. I looked to see who was calling and it was Bill presumably checking in from work to see how my day at work was going. When I answered the phone on the other end was a positively giddy Bill. A few weeks ago Bill applied for a Squad position on the fire department. If he got it, this would be a promotion for him. It would also take him off of working on an ambulance as a paramedic which would mean he might actually get some sleep at night when at work. He has applied for a squad position two other times in the last year and a half only to be passed over. It seems this time however things were different and today he got the call offering him the position! Of course he accepted. I am so so so proud of him. It was the first critical step up in his career path as the majority of the promotions to Captain come from the Squad positions. Bill will also keep his paramedic status current so not to lose those skills but he will no longer be assigned to an ambulance.

Bill will start his new position the Saturday after Thanksgiving. The only downside is that his promotion will take him to a new fire station located on Snelling Avenue. He has had such a great crew to work with at Station 4 and he will miss his "fire family" there but he looks forward to the new challenges awaiting him.

I am so so proud and happy for Bill!

Conversations With Anna

I know this is not the first post with this topic but bear with me. For some reason conversations with Ryan tend to center around math and science and books and seemingly "normal" things. They aren't conversations that put my parenting skills to the test and make me question my qualifications as a mother. Anna on the other hand is a whole other story. Clearly they are not of the same mold.

Last night as she and I snuggled in her bed after reading, after prayer and after lights out the questions started. Yep, the ones as parents we think we are ready for. The ones we have vowed to answer with honesty and openness. Can you guess where this is going? Yep, S-E-X. Ugh. It all started somewhat innocently when she asked if my friend (who has a son Anna's age) was going to get married. This friend was never married to her son's father and is in fact in a very committed relationship with another man whom her son views as his father because his birth father has chosen to not be involved in his life. Did you get all that?

I explained to Anna that yes my friend might get married some day. Anna went on to ask well if she isn't married how did she have her son? Now this is tough for me because I do believe a couple should be married before having a child but I am also empathetic and understanding that this isn't always the case and certainly I would never judge someone on this. My response was "well while it is a good idea to be married before you have a baby, you don't have to be married to have one." That wasn't making sense to Anna so she kept prying. Finally I said that what it takes to have a baby is a man and woman. Yep, the next question was "how?" So I said, "remember how we talked about the egg in a woman's tummy that a baby grows from, where that is how the baby grows." To which Anna said, "but what about the man mommy?" By now my legs are squirming. Not because I don't want to answer but because I am thinking "how much do I say??"

After taking a deep breath I said, "well the woman has an egg and the man has something inside him called sperm (I told her it swims like a fish) and that it meets up with the egg and that makes the baby that grows in the woman's body." I was very proud of myself at this point thinking I had conquered this discussion. Not so soon . . .

Anna's next question, "but mommy HOW does that fish thing get in the egg?" Now I am really troubled and wracking my brain for what my parenting web sites have said in regards to how to address this. Lucky for me Anna saved me. Here is what she came up with, "Oh mom I get it! So everyone is connected and that is how it happens." I said "yes that is it!" I finally made eye contact with her at this point and she was ear to ear grins, "I really get it mom." And then she was on to a completely new topic.

How much of what I said she will remember remains to be seen but for now I think I am home free!

Second Attempt At Snow

I awoke this morning to gray, wintry looking skies. I did my usual first-thing-in-the-morning peek out our bedroom window blinds and thought "boy it could snow any minute." Oh the power of suggestion! Within minutes it was snowing. It hasn't amounted to much of anything although at 1:27 in the afternoon it continues to fall. It did however manage to put a bit of a wrinkle in the morning commute for some (luckily not me). As I listened to accident reports on the radio while in my car I couldn't help but think to myself, "come on people, this is MN, we DO know how to drive in snow, or have we forgot??"

Here are a couple of photos I got this morning. Note most of this snow I photographed appears to be gone now as I look out my office window.

I've Got The Bug

And the sniffles and the cough and the sore throat . . . Yep compliments of Ryan and Anna I caught the cold that seems to be circulating in our neck of the woods. It started out Monday with me feeling tired and achy which turned into a big time sore throat by Monday night. Thinking I could lick this thing I stayed home Tuesday and slept only venturing out to vote. But today I still feel icky. Scratchy throat, stuffed up nose, the works. Ugh - it was definitely the gift that keeps giving unfortunately.

The weather doesn't help as it has definitely turned back to fall-like today - rainy and cloudy and the temps I see are dropping from where they were this morning. Friday night can't come soon enough for me this week.