Pandemonium, Parenting and the Pantry

I knew this day in our parenting would arrive eventually.
Two boys, 18 months apart, just old enough to scheme together effectively.
You can almost see the ideas brewing in their heads.
So far, they haven't tried anything too ridiculous. Mostly just helping each other get things down, or asking the other to ask us for something that the first one knows we'll say no to. You know, that kind of stuff.

That was until today.

It was a fantastic Monday morning. Warm(ish). Say, 40 degrees or something (which is downright tropical here). The sun was shining. My boys climbed into my bed around 6:30 to snuggle and try to convince me they should be able to play and I, studious mom, repeated for the 500th time that we don't get out of bed until its light out, which happens to be 7 am. So they sang and goofed around in my bed until 7 am. Then, as soon as I said go, they scampered off to play with Magna-tiles, Playstix, whatever. I saw them nestled in the play-space and announced that I needed a shower.

Now, mind you dear reader. This is usually when I break out the TV. We don't let them watch TV nearly at all. Like less than 1/2 hour a week. So on the rare day that I forget to take a shower in the evening and need to get one in the morning, I can count on zombie-ness from them for 15 glorious minutes to take a shower (exactly the length of one Daniel Tiger, thank you very much).

Today though, I actually didn't technically need a shower. I took one last night. But the thing is there is something wrong with my head these days. I have some weird issue with my eyes and they are soooo itchy all the time. Also, I frequently weep what I call "acid" tears. I'm not crying, its like my eyes are just draining and then, my lovely eye-lids get all puffy and folded looking. Its not exactly attractive. I can't figure it out and neither can my doctor (which is lame, I know).  Anyway though,we are getting off track. When I woke up today my eyes had been extra weepy/leaky over night and they felt all crusty and gross and they itched like crazy and all I wanted to do was just stand with my face right under the showerhead to let the water pound away the irritation. So it was sort of a bonus shower, or what have you.

Since I figured it would be short, I announced there would be no Daniel Tiger, that they should just keep playing with magna tiles and looking at books. They agreed. Ah, life was grand.

So, I got into the shower, stood there, probably for a bit too long letting the wonderful steamy shower fix my face and skin, enjoyed the lovely alone time and got out. Probably 20 minutes in total start to finish from seeing the boys to seeing the boys again.

Well, let me tell you what their 20 minutes looked like (I can only assume).

First, they played with Magna-tiles and books for 30 seconds. I'd say 30 seconds tops, because the disaster you are about to hear about must have taken the full 20 minutes to accomplish.

Then, one of them decided they were hungry, I'm sure. We have a rule in our house that you don't go in the pantry without an adult. To this rule they said in their little minds "%@# it. She's in the shower. She won't even know" (or whatever kids say to convince themselves to break the rule).
So in the pantry they went. The pantry probably looks like heaven to a 3 and 5 year old. All honeymaid and fruit-leather right in your face. And up on the second shelf is the coveted halloween candy bin (yes, I wrote halloween. Its probably more like valentines day, but whatever, it has (HAD) candy in it).
One of them thought out loud "Candy is the best breakfast! Lets get it down!"
To which Collin's little mind either continued to think, or agreed and promptly opened the stepping stool.
I hate that he can open the stepping stool. Damn fine motor and gross motor skills.
Enter the synergy known as devious brotherhood. I don't know how to explain it except that once one of them figures out the other has done something clever and funny, he starts laughing hysterically, which convinces the first that more of the action is warranted, and so on and so forth. I imagine this was the catalyst for many many broken and open bottles.

So here we are in the pantry. I'm sure that someone was STANDING on the counter and got down the candy box. I'm sure they comenced shoving every sucker or sweet thing they could find in their mouths at that very moment.
I would have just scolded them if I saw this alone. It wouldn't have been too bad.
But then, somewhere in the sugar-induced craziness, Collin, by self-insinuation, decided a food fight would be fun.

What on earth does a 5 year old know about a food fights? Seriously? How does this instinctively come to his mind as the equivalent of fun?

But whatever the case, there they are probably dancing on the counters with suckers in their mouths with no one to yell OH MY GOD GET DOWN YOU ARE GOING TO FALL AND CHOKE ON THAT THING! when one of them sees all the other fun things up there. Bottles of sauces, noodles, cornmeal, flour, loads of things you can OPEN, including TONS (17 bottles in total) of spices.
And so it began.
The great food fight of 2014. Never to be forgotten as long as I live.
During my 20 minute shower, my boys had glorious fun emptying:
2 full bottles of barbeque sauce
1 new bottle of soy sauce (even pulled off that annoying bottle cover!)
1 full bottle of ketchup (the giant size!)
2 FULL big morton salt containers (you know, the ones you use to refill your regular salt?)
6 of those GIANT spice containers from SAM's that you see in restaurants.  One full of F&^*ing peppercorns. Ugh!!! Peppercorns roll everywhere! I'll be finding them for 10 years at least. The others were dried basil, ground cumin, some canadian seasoning for steak, and something else I am forgetting.
Then three other seasoning jars- a season-all and a lawrys salt, both full, because you know, they didn't want to show any brand loyalty.
A whole host of half full spices- the extra smelly ones mostly. Garlic Salt YES. Onion Salt YES. Popcorn Cheesy salt (the bright orange kind!) YES. Garam Masala (to show their love of ethnic foods!) YES. The big bottles too. The nice glass ones from Target pantry.

Seriously.

They also helped themselves to a big tub of almonds (taking handfullls out with their barbeque covered hands), and some crackers to tie everything together.

Now this wouldn't be such a huge deal if they mixed it in a bowl or something. But NO that was clearly not a possibility. I mean, come on, that barbeque sauce is in a squeezy bottle for a reason. And from the second story here (standing on the counter) the trajectory is absolutely perfect to spray that shit EVERYWHERE. EVERY F@#%ing WHERE.
Also, if you pour ALL of those spice jars in a sort of pile on the floor from the second story counter top, it makes a sort of volcano pile that you can watch happen. I'm sure they did something like this. It also makes a lovely paste with all of your said spices that smells like Curry garlic soy HELL.

And so, I came out of my shower. It was really quiet. I said something like "boys where are you" and I heard Collin, from the bathroom downstairs say something like "Owen's making a really bad choice, but I'm washing my feet off in the bathroom, so its okay."

I went down stairs and cried a little bit. I YELLED. I YELLED like an abusive parent yells. It wasn't my proudest moment. I was totally dumbfounded that my boys could do this in 20 MINUTES. I lost my mind. It took everything I had in me to put myself on a little time out and not bruise their backsides so thoroughly that it hurt to sit.

I didn't lay a finger on them though. I took 5 minutes to self-regulate and pull my shit together. I took pictures so Drew could commiserate is solidarity. Someday these pics will be super funny. Today they are only a tiny bit funny.

Here it is, in all its glory. Imagine two boys dancing on the counter feet covered in all this shit, six suckers in each of their mouths and s giant smile on their faces. Ugh. The pictures are all blurry because I was so raging mad I couldn't hold the phone straight.


Just for comparison's sake, here's the pantry typically.

I had serious plans for today. We had lots to do. Those were over. I had to take a vacation day this consumed me so. I started cleaning about 7:40 and we ended around 11 am. It was THAT bad. They had foot prints everywhere. Walls were covered. There was barbeque sauce on the walls UNDERNEATH the cupboards. My curtains looked like someone had murdered a pile of pigs from the smoker. Every shelf had cumin on it, staining everything bright yellow. The bathroom, a nice white counter, where Collin tried to clean his hands and feet was destroyed with yellow stains. I mopped the floors FOUR times. I probably used 50 towels and we are now just finishing all the damn laundry at 11 pm.

Drew, bless his soul saw the text photos and came home. I'm pretty sure he thought I was going to kill our children (okay not really. But maybe duct tape them to the floor was probably a real possibility).
We cleaned and cleaned and cleaned and the kids didn't move two muscles. I made them sit silently and watch the clean up for three hours.
Yes, a three hour time out.
I didn't really plan it that way, but I couldn't take them to the shower until I was done cleaning for fear of tracking more crap through the house, and I sure as shit wasn't going to clean them up first so they could go play while I slaved away.
Maybe again, not my finest moment. Sorry boys. Momma is crazy.
They must have known I had lost it though, because they didn't move for the whole time.

Here's more evidence of their adventure:

(these are about 15 minutes into clean up, so imagine that sort of pile of spices everywhere!, also thats not blood on the curtains! Just soy sauce and BBQ!meh)




 Look almonds and tabasco! Everyone puts those together!

The lovely stepping stool. Every surface looked like that disaster when I started. I had already filled one garbage bag here with various empty containers. I didn't take a picture of the wall on the right, but it appears given my splatter-quality techniques for identification (a-la Dexter), it seems these boys squirted bbq and ketchup onto the floor and then it ricocheted off the floor onto the wall.
It was miserable.

We talked about it a lot later on. When everyone was normal again. I'm pretty sure they won't go in the pantry without an adult again. For the life of me I couldn't figure out how all of the behaviors in the chain of "fun" didn't alert Collin to think this is really BAD. We should stop. I didn't really expect that kind of thinking from Owen, but I did from Collin. I was so disappointed. When I asked him why on Earth he would do this, he really stuck to the "we wanted to have a food fight" thing. It was amazing to me. I couldn't process that answer to save my life. I just kept asking again.
He knew though it wasn't satisfying for me, because even though his answer didn't change, his promises did and so did his level of remorse.

"Momma, I feel really sad that we did that and it made you so angry." "Momma, I promise to be sooo good for the rest of the day." "Momma, how can I make you feel better?"

The boys is good at what we've taught him.

But I totally wasn't ready for any of that. I DID NOT GIVE A F#%. At one point he said something like "I'm hungry" and I said "I DO NOT CARE. you chose to eat all this crap today, so you won't be getting breakfast." He just sat quietly.

He continued to apologize though, which was nice of him. I continued to reject it, which was so CRAPPY of me. It took me leaving the house alone, really really cooling down and transitioning to something else for me really to be okay with it. I was so fired up.

Even though I yelled my face off at him and probably was a huge Ogre, he still wanted to play with me this afternoon, read books, and he wanted to help out. I love him so for his big forgiving heart.

At bedtime I apologized for yelling. I told him I love him like I always do. The same for Owen, who played along in this bit more emotionally, but following in the wings. Owen said, "its okay momma. Next time, don't yell so much. It hurts my ears."

Ugh. Parenting is hard.

My boys, even covered in barbeque sauce, cumin paste, soy and garlic are amazing though.
I'm a lucky momma.

On Being Vulnerable

Hello?
Is there anyone out there?
Seriously, sometimes I wonder who's actually reading this thing.

I'm sort of hoping its no one for this post. But it probably won't be. Murphy's law or whatever.

The past few months in our house have been stressful for us. Lots of changes. Things are sort in shake down mode. The biggest changes though are probably the ones I face independently. Which is weird to address on a public blogosphere-land page. But I'm doing it.

Why might you ask?

Because I'm try hard to be okay with vulnerability.
Vulnerability is tough for me.

I'm pretty type A. I don't like failure. I don't like giving up control. Perfectionist. List maker. Over-achiever. Annoyingly particular. Stubborn like a mule.
Thats me. Right here.

And because of those things there are moments in our life I don't put on the blog. There are days when we are miserable parents and days when the boys are driving me so crazy I think there must be something wrong with one of them, there are days when I burn the crap out of dinner, or create something that belongs as a headliner from craft-fail that looked just so lovely on Pinterest. There are epic fails in money management (oh F&(#!! How on early did that cost THAT much! We are broke AGAIN!), shitty date nights or lack there of, ruined laundry, broken furniture, etc. All of these things happen all the time, but generally I try to observe the "one in one out" and emphasize the positive. All about the positive because I really don't want the boys to dig around in the blog as young adult and see my vivid complaints of our life. Because even though its not all roses, I wouldn't change it for a moment. I love our family, being this wife, this momma, this bit of crazy.

Life is all about being a better you, though (read ME) and I know that I super suck at dealing with being vulnerable. So I'm working on it, courtesy of the great Brene Brown. I super love Brene Brown, but I have to work really hard at it. Daring Greatly is a really big adventure for me.

Anyway, so here's my first go at being vulnerable to the world and writing about something I typically would NEVER write about.

I'm applying for a new job (gasp).
Looking at the sentence looks pretty ridiculously tame on paper. New job? So what?
But here's the thing. In my whole life I've NEVER not gotten the job. Every single job I've applied to I've gotten or been recruited for. So, just a few weeks ago I decided to apply for tenure-track faculty position and this process is the first time that I could be not even in the same ballpark as the type of faculty member this search team wants. I have no way of knowing if I match their wants right now and its terrifying and a GIANT dose of being vulnerable. I'm totally in the waiting game of hearing if they are even interested in my application and its torture. Mostly because I am sitting in a moment where vulnerability means the potential for big life changes.

Tenure track is serious stuff. It means five years at least of busting my ass in ways I didn't know was possible to get tenure. It means publishing like a mad person (which is something I'm not so good at currently, so it also means growing this capacity first) -- you know what they say, publish or perish.
But it also means job security, flexibility post those five years,  amazing retirement and money in the bank. It means getting to work on what I want to work on and am passionate about and it means supporting graduate students to become doctorate level professionals. Its this balance of wanting something badly and not sharing about it for fear of failure which I've always avoided because it meant being vulnerable. Had I not written this post I would never have to explain if I don't get the job. I would never have to spend time perseverating on that failure.

BUT, it also means I wouldn't have the opportunity to be accepting of the support from family and friends if I fail and the experience to help me grow to create a reality in my work that I want-  to do the things that make a difference to me so that the lines between work and happiness blur.

So here's to being vulnerable.
Tiny steps, folks. Tiny steps.

Crafts and Pinterest Craziness

This house is big, folks.
So big that I get exhausted after trying to figure out how to decorate one room.
I have like 10 more rooms to go.
Its going to take a long time.

This is all probably because I get these bigger than reasonable ideas in my head and then commit to executing them. Remember the quilt?

So, what exactly have I been doing that has taken me so far away from the blog? Mostly admiring other people's craftiness on pinterest and then doing a toned down (read "pinterest for dummies") version here at home. Here's the story of the room creations so far.

 Curtains. A serious amount of curtains. The funny thing is that I'm not even close to finished in all the rooms. Our neighbors see everything and we don't even care any more. These red and black and white ones are in the office. I love them because they are so lively to me and give a home to the red things we have.

 We're not limited to window curtains. There are even tiny curtains, curtains under tables, curtains everywhere. These ones hide the ugly in the office in one of the Ikea Expedit hacks. I love the little pop of color it brings to the desk.


Then there was the basement playspace. It was dying for some color and fun, since it is after all for play. You might remember the canvas from the photos below used to be in Owen's nursery in the old house. It had a big giant tree on it. Here I re-purposed it and after months on etsy and pinterest decided on a peacock with loads of beautiful fabric feathers. I sewed each feather (and the peacock's body too) and then adhered it to the canvas.  I originally thought this was going to be an easy project, but after about 2 weeks in, I realized that sewing those feathers is a nightmare, the smaller the feather, the more annoying to sew and that there has to be a lot of strategy in pattern choice, size of feather, how it works with other feathers etc. 3 months later I finally finished the damn thing.

I like how it turned out though, and I love that it gets to show off so many of my favorite fabrics. I love love love beautiful fabrics. I probably shouldn't be allowed in fabric specialty stores alone (JoAnn's doesn't count, they have a crummy selection).

Anyway, after the peacock was done I made a bench seat to go along with it, got some coordinating pillows, and viola, sitting space in the play room.

Then, with those same fabrics, I made covers for all the ikea storage boxes that fit into the giant expedit storage furniture thing. They were all boring white before, and now are lots of various pops of fun color.

 All the while, since oh, say October. I've also been working on this afghan. I picked the three main colors I chose to use in the living room and started crocheting because I'm always cold and need blankets pretty much everywhere. Its been a labor of love that I work on only when I have time, so I'm still working on it and don't expect to really finish it until summer or so, when I probably won't need to use it at all. Sigh.

 Do you see that lovely chartruse string in the middle? Don't worry, its just an end that I haven't trimmed or crocheted into the stitches there. When I'm tying onto another skein of yarn I'm so professional in my technique, don't you think? There are about 50 of these types of leftover strings from my lacluster tying on all over the blanket right now.

And then of course, there are still many around the house crafts that I've been working on. We FINALLY finished the last of the caulking last month. I bit the bullet and spent an entire weekend in this shower caulking every tiny little crack.

 Whats that, you can't see the caulk? Fantastic, that's the way it should be. Really, though, in this close up, you can see the lines of fun I had that day. Not those kinds of line's folks. I'm not that crazy.

 So there you have it. Our list of to-do's is still long, but at least you know what keeps us away from you dear readers!

Until we meet again!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Its February, the cold is bitter, and life feels rather depressing with day after day of below zero windchills and temps (we've have 40+ such days this winter so far). There is a tiny bit of sunshine tucked away in mid February. A day to celebrate those we love and cherish so very much.

Drew and I have had exactly .01 minutes to ourselves since Christmas. I was utterly exhausted from lots of various stresses (maybe more on that later, but maybe not), and desperately needed a moment to not think about anything but food and wine.

It arrived. A hot date on V-day. We sauntered down to Barrio, a local Minneapolis tapas place (which momentarily reminded me of our honeymoon in Spain, and then I started to really want to go to Spain again, which lead to daydreams of vacations, and for 10 glorious minutes I was on my way, alas, reality regained hold when the waitress alerted us to the many specials of the evening). Barrio is a trendy place, famous for being a tequilla bar (which in solitary form really wasn't super appealing to me, but the Margarita, on the other hand, had my name written all over it), and because of its trendiness they expected a big crowd for Valentines day meaning the tables were exactly 4 inches from the one next to you. You think I'm kidding. I'm really not. I heard the two ladies alongside us the whole dinner. Had I been bored on my own date I probably would have joined theres, it was much like we were sharing a table. Luckily, I wasn't bored at all, since I had such a handsome face to look at and lots to talk about.

When we planned our date, I took care of dinner and the sitter, and left the rest up to Drew. I've grown tired of being the "event planner" in our life, and so I've handed it partially off to my dear husband, who for the first time, took it on like it was his job (because I guess, now it is). I was pleasantly suprised that he planned two things, a trip to a a local icecreamery called Sebastian's in uptown where the icecream is all made in store everyday, and then on to a movie.

The icecream was so delicious. I had some chocolaty heaven thing. I forget what it was called but the icecream was dark dark dark chocolate and it was filled with surprises of health, little crunch things and other chocolate chip things. Mmmmm. Just thinking about it makes me happy.

Since it was something like 6 degrees out, icecream isn't in the same kind of demand as it is in say, July. So Sebastian's has a little discount plan: the colder the weather outside, the more you get off. I think we ended up with 20% off or something. A girl feels good when she gets icecream and its on SALE.

Then we went to the theater to see Her. Drew picked the movie. Props for staying in the romantic comedy genre. It was an interesting movie. I can't say I really liked it or didn't like it. The plot revolved around a man falling in love with his computer, but not in the comic relief  kind of way. More like in the serious lets make this digital/human love thing work. It left me feeling all disturbed on the inside and asking all kinds of weird questions. Like "Will this shit really happen someday???"
The weirdness though didn't spoil the fun of being on an uniterupted date. I loved it. I love dates. I wish I could go on one every week.

And so, I've decided, in the coming months after a period of adjustment, I'm going to start going on one at least every other week. I think it will help me stay sane.

Valentine's day wasn't all about Drew though. The boys were in on the fun too. Collin worked out his valentine's for school, which thanks to pinterest, turned out adorable.
See for yourself:

We're all about the puns on words around here. Plus, I felt less guilty handing out goldfish crackers than candy. Mostly because I feel bad for the kids with moms like me who take that candy and throw it away. Luckily my boys don't miss it.

Owen, on the other hand, still doesn't realized valentine's day is over, and I have no plans of ruining it for him. All day today he's been saying in his little Owen voice "happy walentine's day, momma! I wuv you!" to which I just scoop him up and thank him graciously. The kid is so darn adorable and I love hearing it that I won't really mind if it goes on for a week or so.

Anyway, in the yearbooks of our lives, this valentine's day went down with great success. No gifts were necessary, it was all about the time and understanding that those we love are exceptional parts of our lives, and deserve to be celebrated every so often. Although, Drew did get me some alcohol that I really love. I'm not sure how I feel about what that seems to say, but we'll drink to it, nonetheless!

Susie's Shower

The year of 2014 will bring many blessings to our family, I'm sure, but one of the greatest will be the arrival of baby Aiden. Susie, Drew's sister is expecting her first baby with her husband Chris, and as such, we are expecting our first nephew. We're pretty excited about another little boy to play with, and the boys are already brewing ideas about how much fun it will be to have baby Aiden around.


While we were in Milwaukee Susie came up for the week. She's due on her birthday, March 16, so that made her about 29 weeks along or so (6.5 months along, I think). She's a pretty adorable momma, and so we decided a shower was in order to celebrate Aiden's arrival.

The shower was lots of fun to put together, mostly because I got to play with tons of baby stuff. I decided on a "mustache bash" theme and we filled her grandma's house with 25 or so of her nearest and dearest family members.

The results was lots of eating, laughing and general excitement about the next baby. Its been a few years, so we're all brimming for a new bundle to cuddle and rock and coo at. And of course, gifts too. Lots of fantastic love showered in over many baby essentials.

A few games:

 

A few decorations:

 

 

 

A few friends and family members:

A few mustache faces photos:

 

And finally, a few gifts to open: