Toddler Terror

There is a reason I blog infrequently these days. Her name is Caroline.

If I turn my back for one second, she is up on the dining room table (where, usually, I keep a small tray handy with salt, pepper, sugar and a small vase of flowers), sometimes just sitting, but other times dumping piles of salt and sugar around the table. Or maybe she's scaling the windowsill adjacent to our big living room window (which she also fell off of the other night, and scored a black eye).

This girl is busy. Trouble. Peace is only attained when she is sleeping, and usually that time seems better spent on catching up with the big kids' schoolwork. Or laundry. Or collapsing on the sofa with a good book.

And now, there she is. Snack time is over, the Terror is out of her high chair (and therefore, her quasi-containment), and I must hit publish and be off!

Thank You, Blog

Way back when I started this blog I didn't really know what the point of it was. I didn't know if I would keep up with it. And, most importantly, as a blogger, I really didn't know who I was or what I wanted to say.

It's been a few years and I now know what the point of blogging is (at least for me, anyway).

I know that, give or take a spell here and there, I will keep up with it.

And (and here's the real crux of today's post) while I don't really know that I have a point that I am trying to get across every day, I do know exactly who I am, not only as a blogger, but as a person. Further, it's because of this blog that I know my voice as well as I do in all facets of my life.

I know that probably sounds hokey, especially to those of you who don't blog, or who blog about something impersonal. I have always felt pretty comfortable with who I am, even when most of my peers didn't, but before starting this blog my life was fairly compartmentalized in the same way most peoples' lives are: work life, home life, family, these friends, those friends, et cetera. Blogging changes that, though, especially if you're writing about anything remotely real to your life. All of a sudden a conversation that is most apt to happen with These Friends is now being read by Those Friends and Those Friends are seeing a part of you they had yet to discover.

When I first started blogging I didn't share my blog with everyone; I didn't try and keep it a secret necessarily, I just only shared it, intentionally, with some of my life's compartments. That all changed when I joined Facebook. My e-worlds collided with my real life worlds in a very real, very fast way and all of a sudden everyone was telling me they were reading my blog; any shred of compartmentalization in my life had evaporated.

At first I felt kind of uncomfortable with this development; I thought knowing my audience was filled with different people wanting to read different things would limit what I might choose to write about, and would somehow make my posts more generic and less about me. I've found the opposite has happened. I know I can't please everyone, and so I only write what I care about and say what I want to say.

What I am saying, in a very long-winded, convoluted way, is that you see me here, for better or worse, and I don't know if I could have said that in August of 2006. Thanks for sticking around through awkward teenage years of my blog. I promise lots more of the mundane everyday to come, and a lot less (never!) posts about things I don't care about just to fill space.

Spam

What is going on with all the spam in my comments? What good is word verification if the spammers can easily circumvent it? Any advice from those more knowledgeable than I?

Good Week

In my goal of blogging every day-- or every weekday, anyway-- I often fall short, and most frequently posts fail to come not as a result of a lack of ideas, but because of a lack of time.



Take this week for instance. An outing with home-school friends. Days spent outside, basking in the warm, bright daylight hours. Weeds, which had staged a full-on assault on the flower borders, were staved off and, ultimately defeated. Garden conundrums were dealt with. (How does one provide enough produce for a family our size with two hurdles to jump: a small yard and a head gardener who insists on lots of flowers and color?) And, of course, amongst all of this everydayness was more everydayness: cooking, cleaning, errands.



My story is not unique. Thousands (millions?) of parents across the globe can relate. Parents of small children understand that a task that should take certain amount of time takes at least three times longer than alloted for with kids in tow. But-- and I'm sure other parents will say this too-- there is joy in the unforeseen. A tiny hand placing a pole bean in the dirt. A peaceful cuddle on a blanket in the grass with a giggling baby.

No, I didn't blog this week. But it was a good, good week.

You Must Allow Me to Tell You

You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.

Those words, spoken by Mr. Darcy to Elizabeth Bennet in Jane Austen's most well-known work, Pride and Prejudice, have become almost iconic; every Austen fan out there who reads or hears those words knows, instantly, who spoke them and when.

This morning my friend Terri gave me the mug you see above. It was ostensibly a birthday gift-- an early one-- but I suspect that it was a gift that my friend saw in her Etsy surfing and decided that it was something I, a lover of Austen, needed to own. She handed it to me outside Barnes and Noble, in the rain, where she and I, and some of our children, huddled under a lone umbrella.

We were there to pick up a copy of Artful Blogging, a magazine which a few months ago I had never heard of, and was introduced to because Terri's blog is featured in the current issue.

We stood there in the rain, exchanging "We need to get together soon!"s, quick hugs and this lovely mug that I will use and think not of Jane Austen or Elizabeth Bennet, but of my crazy, dread-headed friend, who has been my friend since we were seventeen years old and who still knows me well enough to see a mug that, had I seen it first, I would have bought. In a lot of ways we've grown up together and, ultimately, we've grown into very different people, but whatever that bind is that makes people friends, Terri and I have it. I have the magazine sitting beside me, a cup of hot coffee in my new mug and I am about to turn to page sixty-eight in the summer edition of Artful Blogging and read words that are unknown to me but that I already love.

Thanks again, T.

Tweaking

Obviously I've been messing around with format of my blog. I liked the old header picture but, obviously, Caroline was missing. However, I really don't like the header I have up there right now either, but I don't have any more time to play around with it, so it's stuck there for now.

Is it even possible to capture all four kids on one picture where all look OK? I'm thinking no, so the kids may have to leave the header. Sorry, kids.

Tomorrow is another day

I had idea for the day. As I thought about the idea and as it mentally shaped up I liked the idea and was excited about taking some time today to sit down and think for a few minutes and try to flesh out an interesting blog post. Except today never provided an opportunity. Between schooling, shuttling to preschool and routine doctor visits, those quiet moments never materialized.

Maybe tomorrow?

Today

I really admire bloggers who can find something to say every day. Talented bloggers can make the mundane come alive and I appreciate their presence on the internet because I love to divert myself from my everyday life with the internet at some point each day.

I know I am not one of those bloggers, nor do I really want to be. The mere idea of trying to spin an interesting post out of this week exhausts me. Not that it's been uninteresting. No, we've been busy with horseback riding camp, swimming, shopping, the fair and lots of cooking and, I suppose, had I tried, a blog post that would, at the very least, interest me in months to come as I look back on this electronic scrapbook, could have been composed. But I don't want to try. I want to smell (and taste!) my marinara sauce that's composed entirely of freshly picked tomatoes simmering away on the stove. And read Julie and Julia. And enjoy the fresh, summer breeze that's pushing back the curtains in my living room. And listen to Elisabeth snore away on the sofa.

In other words, for today I want to live in the moment, not write about it. I suppose in few months I will look back and wonder what we did these last few weeks of August before Caroline arrived and I might chastise myself for not at least taking a picture of something but, then again, I might read this post and maybe-- if I'm lucky-- I'll be able to smell the fresh summer air and remember this quiet, peaceful moment and hold onto it since I know there will be many moments ahead that won't be so peaceful and quiet. We'll see.

Leave Me Alone!

I've gotten into the habit over the summer of waking up either just before the kids or just as they're waking up. My kids are 8, 6 and 3 (and, since it's relevant to this post, close to being 9, 7 and 4) so I don't think it's too much to ask for them to leave me alone for thirty minutes while I drink my coffee and check my email, check bloglines and surf some news sites, etc.

Apparently, though, some mornings it seems it is too much to ask.

What are you doing, Mom? What's that say, Mom? Can I go on your computer? Mom, I spilled my juice! Mom, what's the weather supposed to be like today? Mom, Mom, MOM!!!!

Don't they realize by now how much calmer and relaxed their mother is when they just leave me alone for that thirty minutes or do they honestly enjoy being parented all day by a cranky mother?

2009 Blogging

I think a common New Year's resolution of bloggers to to put more effort (and posts!) into their blog. I don't know that I ever verbalized that thought, but internally I thought to myself that maybe, new year, new blog commitment. And I think I meant it.

But then the first trimester of this pregnancy kicked in in earnest and I spend each day counting the hours until bedtime and feeling queasy all day long. Somehow blog posts entitled "Morning Sickness Strikes Again!" don't seem terribly interesting.

I'm still here. Eight weeks pregnant with an ultrasound picture of the baby and its beating heart hanging on my refrigerator and ridiculously and miserably sick. This too will pass and, I suspect, hardly remembered in the years to come. But for now it's interfering with any desire I might have to blog.

Camp

Tomorrow morning Madeleine leaves for her first sleep away camp. Granted the camp is only two nights long but still... it's sleep away camp! It's over five hours away from here so the other moms whose girls are going and I are staying at a hotel/spa ten minutes away from the camp (yeah, yeah, how lame and overprotective are we?). I'm looking forward to a girls weekend of relaxing, reading, and chatting.

The reason I share this, though, is that I won't be blogging. At least I don't think I'll be blogging. Not that I've been terribly great about posting every day anyway, but I didn't want to get the Walnut Grove trip properly documented before I forget it all but that, like my home-schooling posts, basement "after" posts, and others, I'm sure, will have to wait until later. With me it's always later, isn't it. Hm.

Quick Post

I apologize for my lack of posting.  The reason?  It isn't even because I've been particularly busy with anything beyond the typical never-ending tower of laundry (I swear the kids change thirteen times a day), reading (The Painted Veil was a notable read of late, though this is a rare case where I think I liked the movie more than the book) and meetings and a couple of nights out with family (Diana and Cloence one night) and neighbor friends.

Surely I could cull something to blog about from my recent experiences, but I just don't quite feel like it right this second.

But I'll be back to regular posting shortly. 

Paris Hilton Meets Politics

OK, not really, but sort off. It appears John McCain's apolitical daughter, Meghan McCain, is blogging from the campaign trail. And yeah, she supports her dad and blogs about that, but she appears more interested in who is on the campaign trail with her dad and what they're wearing than what they actually say. A fun, different take on the "inside the campaign" blog.

Here it is: McCainBlogette

Interlude

Sometimes I go on a blogging hiatus because I have nothing to share. Or nothing I feel like sharing, anyway. But our lives, lately, have been chock full of bloggable moments, it's just that I've been too busy to blog about them.

And now? I have a few free moments while Madeleine works on some illustrations for a book of poems she is putting together, Hank plays at a friend's house and Elisabeth chomps on some candy, but those bloggable moments? Gone. Forgotten.

I feel certain that later, when true quiet descends (i.e. the sort that won't be over as soon as the project is finished or the candy digested), they'll come to me. Hopefully.

Reading: A Post by Hank

I CAN READ 3 BOOKS AND I MIGHT GET MORE NEXT TIME I GO TO THE LIBRARY. I WANT TO GET THEM ALL.

MOMMY SAYS I CAN'T CHECK THEM ALL OUT AT ONE TIME BUT I WANT TO ANYWAY.

FROM,

Hank

Stupid Google

I mean, I don't really think it's stupid, you know, having been smart enough to basically take over the internet and everything, but this is stupid.

Lull

I feel like I'm in a lull right now in regards to many things I normally find enjoyable. Or maybe calling it a funk would be more appropriate.

In any event I have many, many unread books in my home that I'm anxious to read and, yet, can't quite work up interest in any of them right now. Blogging? I love to write, but lately the mood hasn't struck me.

Maybe it's because I've been busy watching the kids build snowmen...

and baking gingerbread men (you really should try the recipe; it's extra delicious, though admittedly, time consuming!)...


and, of course, schooling Madeleine, which really deserves a post in and of itself, but, like I said, I'm in a lull right now. A funk. So maybe later.

New Look

I bet you all think I rearrange my house all the time too, based on how often I change the look of my blog. Well, you'd be right. I like change.

That said, I really didn't mean to change how it looked this time. All I wanted to do was add the third column, which I did, obviously (which, I did with the assistance of this incredibly helpful and wonderful blog). But, while doing so I erased everything else, format-wise, and had to start over with colors, spacing, et cetera.

I like it but I may continue to futz with it. Until, of course, I re-vamp it completely once I get sick of it.

UPDATE: I just asked Hank what he thought of the new look of my blog and he said, "I hate it." So there you have it. Lovely.

New Links

For those of you not paying as close attention to my sidebar as I do, let me highlight a few recently added websites that I think are worth paying a visit.

1. The Grammar Vandal. This blog is highly enjoyable. It's witty, interesting and educational. How can you top that? It has, however, made me incredibly self-conscious when composing my own blogs. Please, please, Grammar Vandal, don't examine my blog too closely; I'm certain there are mistakes aplenty!

2. Delocator. Enter your zip code and this website will help you find locally owned coffee shops, bookstores and movie theaters. Hey, I like Starbucks just as much as the next girl but I love my local coffee house more, and always like to encourage local entrepreneurs.

3. Mathematically Correct. Lots of essays and links relating to the "new, new math" used in many (most?) school districts across the country. This type of math curriculum, which our local public school uses, was probably the catalyst for encouraging us to investigate other schooling options which eventually led to our decision to home school.

Happy Birthday, Blog!

My blog is a year old today. Break out the confetti and noisemakers, folks!