Welcome to a world full of adventures.

Gracie finished reading The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner last night. I was so excited for her to read it and she was so reluctant that I even offered up a $5 bill as a bookmark. Not only was it money wellspent (hooray for encouraging reading!), the bribe was entirely unnecessary by the time the children escaped the mean baker and found the boxcar. As I knew it would be.

I loved adventure stories growing up. Survival stories are still one of my sister and I’s favorite categories within fiction. We would play outside for days, continuing the same storylines in our pretend play, living off mint and blueberries and any other “edible” weeds that we could stew in pails of water and…gunk. As we found other stories – Island of the Blue Dolphins, My Side of the Mountain, and so many others, it made us believe all the more that we, too, could survive if we really needed to. There isn’t a summer in my childhood that I can think of where we weren’t consumed with some type of survival-play. Even when we were in our Barbie phase, our Barbies were stranded in the wilderness and had to survive.

So, for me, watching my Gracie-girl get hooked on those same sorts of stories ignites a fire from long ago. The kind of fire that will prompt me to unearth my old slingshot my mom saved from all of those years ago (and really hope she doesn’t kill herself). The kind that will make goodness knows how many trips to the library or to Half-Price Books like my mother ran me to Spag’s so many times to get the next book. The kind that waits impatiently for Bee to want to sit still long enough to listen to chapter books.

There is nothing – NOTHING – better in parenting than sharing a love for stories with your children.

Sometimes I want to read in very particular places.

There are very few places on my college campus that I can say I still miss with any sort of longing, but one of them is definitely our library. Dinand wasn’t my first choice when it came to studying – I was more a study-in-my-room-instead-of-slogging-across-campus kinda girl. Of course, my freshman year when the first big round of exams were upon me, I didn’t know that about myself. So I did what I thought I was supposed to be doing and I packed up my textbooks and my index cards and my highlighters, pens, and (forbidden) snacks and set out for the library.

As I recall, I didn’t get much studying done that night; I went exploring instead. For those who like hidden rooms, tucked away staircases, nooks, annexes, and all other sorts of magical architectural features, Dinand is a wonder. There were two (and a half?) floors underground. Hidden hallways and recesses everywhere. Creaky elevators and more mundane seeming rooms upstairs. There was a room off to the right of the main see-and-be-seen room (and probably down a little) that I honestly never knew about until the end of my junior year when I was trying to find my way out of a particular labyrinth of rooms. There were rooms I didn’t find until I saw their windows as I was walking back from class and purposely went looking for them during my next adventure. So there was a sense of mystery and exploration always hovering in the air.

Dinand always had the mood you needed for whatever particular bit of reading you had to do. There was the main room, the see-and-be-seen room, with large tables, rows of computers for searching the archives, big windows, bright lights, and lots of co-eds. The two main sub-floors – for I spent most of my time in Dinand underground – were mostly brightly lit and used by study-groups, sort-of-scheduled hey-let’s-bump-into-each-other-later hook-up spots, and lots of study corrals and stuffed chairs for lounging and reading. It was down near the fiction section where I would read between classes, mostly unbothered, because who ever bothers with the fiction section in a co-ed library unless you’re looking for some peace and quiet? And when I really needed to get away, there was the really bottom floor accessible by a hidden(ish) staircase that was situated in the middle of the stacks. The overhead light was much dimmer down there – practically non-existent – and much of it you had to turn on by dimmers set to timers on the ends of each stack.

Dinand seemed to evoke a bit of everything, from a haunted Victorian mansion to your mother’s kitchen table where you absolutely must buckle down and study to the Monday night hang-out. There are still times when I think I could just be somuch more productive if I was sitting at one of Dinand’s giant tables and having to prove why I needed to hoard so much space. Or how gratifying a nap would be tucked up into my favorite “fiction chair” down in the stacks. Of course, I’m glad I don’t have to climb the eleventy-bazillion stairs out front that Dinand conjured to cover the ‘torture-chamber’ requirement, but some days I miss even those.

There are lots of places near and dear to my heart back home. And this week – whether it’s the beginning of fall, or my concentration on my research project, or Kim’s new class - Dinand has been calling out to me more than usual.

This is what happens when you encourage thinking outside the box.

I change my mind. I do have a favorite. And it’s Bee. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It all sounds like pretty talk when it’s all theoretical, but then you throw Halloween costumes into the mix and…well, there you go. Bee clearly loves me more and wants to keep my mind intact, so PONIES FOR BEE!

Ahem, er, so we started talking about Halloween costumes this weekend while I was dying of The Plague, Revisited. In between admonitions of “Please <cough> stop <sneeze> arguing!” and distractions of “Why don’t you <cough, wheeze> go eat some plague cake?” I thought it would be just the right time to ask my darlings if they had settled on what they wanted to be for Halloween. That’s when Bee declared she was still madly in love with fairies (and her mama) and so instantly declared, “Duh…Tinkerbell.” She has pretty much wanted to be Tinkerbell since the day after Halloween last year. Stubborn or decisive or sanity-saving – you decide.

Gracie, on the other hand. Oh, Gracie, Gracie, Gracie. She used to want to be a punk rocker. How much fun that would have been! Dazzlingly sparkly 80s clothes…funky cowgirl boots…denim short skirt and funky leggings…hair spiked, teased, and dyed different colors. I already bought AquaNet, people! It was going to be So! Much! Fun!! And then Gracie decided to play “Possessed” to her sister’s “Blessed” and told me that she wanted instead to be for Halloween a….tornado.

A…tornado?

See, this is what I get for letting her watch Stormchasers reruns with me. A tornado. Okay – how exactly am I going to do that? “Gracie, I don’t know if I could do that. Even if we dress you in grey leggings and a gray turtleneck [or t-shirt, more likely, since we live practically on top of the freakin' equator], and maybe have streamers coming off of you, I don’t know if anyone will know who you are.”

“That’s okay! We can get rocks and grass and glue it to my outfit!”

“Yeah, even if you spin up to the doorway and I occasionally throw a cow past you, I don’t know if people will know what you are.” Heh. And maybe I should play the soundtrack to Twister in the back ground. Or yell, “It’s blowin’ up!” like Reed does in Stormchasers. Or glue a Discovery Channel logo (or The Weather Channel) logo to her shin. Or, hey!, maybe I can convince Bee to be a witch and they can sing the Witch’s Theme from The Wizard of Oz when they ring the doorbell. Yeah, right, there’s no way Bee’s changing her mind.

Nope, there’s no changing Gracie’s mind either. She wants to be a tornado. I’m hoping once the stores put out the hair spray/dye, she’ll get all distracted by the shiny and change her mind. Until then, I think my weekends between now and Halloween are booked trying to figure out how the heck to my daughter into a tornado without bringing along pictures of her room to prove it.

50/50 odds and pick ‘em.

This article and the idea of “favorites” has been the topic of the week with my mommy friends. Whether or not parents play favorites has certainly been debated since sibling rivalry was invented, but I don’t remember seeing anyone posit so confidently that a whopping 95% of parents definitely, certainly, and without question have a favorite child. (And – what? The other five percent possess an utter lack of emotion?) To be fair, the author was quoting the author of a recently published parenting book, but she seems to have bought into the theory.

Maybe if the premise was that 95% of parents play favorites, that I could certainly buy. Heck, I do that all the time. The favorite is clearly the child who is listening to what I am asking her to do, who is not whining, who is not bringing notes home from school or otherwise making me question what in god’s green earth I am doing. Who doesn’t, at least once a day, want to sell one of their children to the gypsies? Or want to buy someone a pony because at least she finished her homework before you had to tie her to her chair and put on your drill sergeant hat? And who the heck’s children manage to fit a single mood all day and not trade off tactics with their siblings, with the solitary goal (it seems) of making Mommy mentally unhinged? Ahem.

My point is that my children, at least, have far too much personality packed into them, far too many little selves for me to ever manage to choose one who for a solid day had been my favorite all along – even if I was being honest! When Gracie gets all excited about a chapter she has read, or showing off the school work she learned: she is my favorite. When Bee’s face lights up because she figured out a problem all by herself, or when she gets that mischievous court-jester twinkle in her eye, or when I overhear her gut-busting pretend play from the next room: she is my favorite. But I could never choose which little girl I would save first if our house was on fire and both were unconscious.

Which wasn’t really the point of the article. It didn’t push the “favorites” issue quite that far. The author was justifying the claim based more on instinctual affinity for the child who most closely resembles you. Which is an interesting theory, because it lets the 95% of the parents blamed in the article off the hook: you can’t really help having one child who has taken on your characteristics and inherited your genes, can you? No, you can’t. Of my two girls, I can say that one more closely reminds me of myself. One needs feedback and approval more than the other. One has sought out the role of “little momma” and thirsts for responsibility. One would sooner give up breathing than arguing and justifying even the smallest action. One has a wicked sence of humor, sarcasm, and mockery. (Okay, okay – they both have that.) And I will admit that my heart does swell when I notice those mini-me characteristics. But so, too, does it find every single similar fault, every weakness, and whereas I think the author of the article – and many other parents – think, Oh! I know all about that! I shall fix in you what I can’t fix in myself! Because I know better now and can debug this newer model!  I am more, You’re doomed, kid. I can help her learn the tools to overcome it, but “fixing” those issues is going to be entirely up to her, just as it’s up to me to fix my own faults. So as much as I admire the ways that one child and I are similar in many ways, I admire my other little duckling for being different and “better” than my faults.

Perhaps the author should have declared that 95% of parents understand one child better, rather than favoring one child, and then still followed up with what I thought was a very interested comment, which was sort of glossed over near the end: even a denial is in itself an act of love. It insinuates that parents don’t want to be unfair towards their children, or treat them differently. It’s a great point and, to me at least, the real focus. Whether or not there is a favorite, parents should constantly find ways to connect, love, and understand each child.

That doesn’t mean everything has to be the same, evenly divided and measured at all times. Children will have different needs at different times. And always cut yourself some slack – life is hard and we will get it wrong sometimes. But keep an eye open to how things look to how each child is feeling. How would they rate how things are going? Be open to adjustments. And most of all – just keep trying. I mess up constantly, it seems like, but at least I will never doubt that my kids see how hard I try. And and as long as I’m their favorite mama, I guess that’s all that counts.

Guaranteed to make your Monday morning tastier.

I have very little to post from this weekend. This weekend shall go down in Casa de Katie history as The Weekend Of The Plague. Yeah, that – still got it. Saturday morning I thought I felt a million times better. I thought a trip to the zoo – where we haven’t been in months – would be just the thing to keep the kiddos occupied and argument free for half the day. Yeah, except what really happened is that my allergies were triggered from being in the big, scary outdoors and I blew through my tissue stash halfway through. Epic fail.

So! I spent the rest of the weekend on the couch, thinking I was moments from death. The childrens were mostly good. Especially because I bribed them with this: the only other thing I got off the couch for:

Plague Cake
Cinnamon Sour Cream Cake

 

Ingredients:

 

(cake)
1/2 c. butter
1 c. sugar
2 eggs
1 c. sour cream (Lite sour cream works just as well.)
1 t. vanilla
2 c. flour
1 t. baking powder
1 t. baking soda
1/4 t. salt

 

(cinnamon layers)
1/3 c. sugar
1/3 c. brown sugar, packed
2 t. cinnamon
1/2 t. nutmeg

 

1. Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl.
2. Add eggs, sour cream, and vanilla and mix until well-blended and consistently smooth.
3. Heap flour on top and mix into the flour pile the baking soda, baking powder, and salt.  Mix into egg/butter/sugar mixture.
4. In a separate bowl, mix together sugars and spices for cinnamon layer.
5. Layer half the cake batter on the bottom of your pan.  I used a 9″ springform pan, but you could also use a 9″ x 9″ square pan or probably two loaf pans.

 

Bake at 325 degrees F for 50 minutes (if in a round or square 9″ pan, at least).

The thing I liked about this recipe (that I got from my sister) was that she swore it was impossible to botch. She’s cooked it at higher temps and lower temps and it’s been fine (I can swear it bakes just as well – although a mite faster – at 350 because I just now noticed it’s the wrong temp. Whoops.); she’s used tub butter instead of stick; and I can attest that having almost enough baking powder is just fine.

One more approved substitution: Kim recommended taking a shot of Goldschlagger with each piece, and I can attest that a shot of Dayquil works just as well. Or, if you’re one of my children, you don’t even need a shot of anything other than “Let’s go eat that piece of cake Mom offered for no reason before she changes her mind.” It was the best conflict resolution strategy ever. And that’s just what I needed this weekend.

And I think I’ll stop looking.

No, not for the cupcakes: everyone will be happy to hear I found those. You know, after I pulled apart half my closet, went to my doctor’s appointment, and then saw my sister’s comment about where they were stashed. Of course, the downside was that I was so pitifully sick with The Plague that I couldn’t muster up any appetite. So instead I’ve brought them to work as a reward for making it all the way out of bed and across the city. In other words, we’ll see how long I hold out today.

No, my ‘not looking’ is more about how helpful my darling childrens are when I’m not feeling my best. Gracie, in particular, kept asking what she could do to help me. There wasn’t much – I don’t make much of a mess just lounging on the couch all day and the girls had spent dinner with their dad. But there was a dishwasher full of clean dishes to put away. Gracie started putting away the dishes she could reach – the tupperware, pans, and doo-dads – and stacked neatly on the counter all of the dishes that needed to be put away in the upper cabinets. Bee, on the other hand, was feeling left out because there really isn’t enough space for two people to move around next to the dishwasher. So I put Bee in charge of putting the silverware away. And this is what I found last night when I went looking for a spoon to stir my hot apple cider:

I’m not looking in the rest of my cabinets.

Defeated by Awesome.

I am not having the very best week. Things are uberhectic at ThePlaceThatShallNotBeDiscussed, I had a small unbloggable mini-crisis, and then I came down with The Plague a head and chest cold. It’s not all that unexpected, really – The Plague has been making its rounds and several people at ThePlaceThatShallNotBeDiscussed have already had it. It’s four days of misery, compounded by sleeplessness and an extra helping of not being able to breathe for those of us who are so asthmatically inclined.

But! My point is that I happened to mention all of this to my sister yesterday morning just when I started to feel the full effects of The Plague. Our convo went something like

Me: Whine, whine, whiney, blah blatherton.
Kim: There are [Hostess] Chocolate Cupp-cakes hidden in your tornado closet in the back of the L-shape to the right, between a box and the wall.

Peeps, I literally got all teary eyed. I had hidden treasure in the guise of Chocolate Cuppa-cakes waiting for me if I could just make it through the day! That is love, yo.

Well, I didn’t make it through the day. I went home early because, well, no one wanted to catch what I had. That and the fact that I at least moved every project I was working on off my desk and to the next person for approval. Turns out going home for a nap and stronger drugs is quite the motivator. Also – cuppa-cakes! So I came home, swallowed some pretty, pretty Dayquil and Mucinex, and headed into the closet.

Uh….I couldn’t find the cuppa-cakes.

I checked behind (almost) all the boxes. Of course, I was pretty fuzzy-headed and the body-aches pretty much dulled most of my energy, so maybe I didn’t check quite as hard as I needed to. But still – thwarted by the awesomeness of pre-hidden treasure for crappy days. Not to worry – I am home again with The Plague today and even though I could barely get the kids out the door to school, I will somehow get the closet straightened and Find. My. Cuppacakes.

Even if it’s the last thing I do before I die of The Plague.

Because I need this list today.

Things that make me happy:

1. Weezer’s Blue album. They sang me all the way into work this morning (…as soon as I kicked my Kidz Bop crowd out of the car, that is).
2. Being able to say “Yes” to some crazy, yet wonderful-to-them request from the girlies. This morning it was, “Can we just stay in the car until my favorite line in this son, Mom?” Seeing as it was Kidz Bop’s rendition of Forget You, you can see the crazy-making. But 30 seconds made the girls ridiculously happy.
3. Soft tissues. Who knows if this is allergies, the start of a cold, both or what. But I feel like I got hit by a truck. Thankfully, that truck sometimes comes with bumpers that feel an awful lot like extremely soft tissues.
4. Teeeeeea, Grommit. I finished my sister’s Awake tea yesterday. I have a feeling today will heavily feature Irish Breakfast Tea. My throat feels happy already!
5. Exotic coffee brought to me by my trip-taking friends. And, okay, caffeine in general.
6. My crazy-ass thoughts I get while I’m running. Last night I acted like a mostly-normal person almost all the way through my run. I was pushing myself hard because I was sort of supah-stressed, so I thought I just pushed straight through the delirium. But then on my last lap I accidentally stepped on a giant beetle (there were several lying dead on my route – what up with that, Beetles? Why keel over and die now that it’s a normal temp and not 100&fryyourbacksideoff outside?). Anyway, I was congratulating myself on missing all the dead giant beetles, when I heard a ker-splat! from under my sneaker. I immediately thought There’s a reason I try to miss those suckers. Because I like wearing my shoes all the way to my bedroom and into the walk-in closet so I can just kick them off and not, you know, have to bend over or anything. But now I have beetle-guts all over my shoe and if I walk on the carpet – my beige-flecky carpet – I might not know what all of those specks are. See? Crazy. But my kind of crazy makes me happy.
7. Anonymous coffee. Sure wish I had some this morning.
8. Running to Queen, Weezer, SexyBack, Tom Petty, and OK Go.
9. Ooh! Remembering I have Mayan Hottie cookies in the freezer. Sisters are awesome, yo.
10. Any and all videos featuring OK Go and The Muppets. I mean, really. It’s the very definition of Happy! Really. If you haven’t seen the other OK Go videos, you need to go see them here, here, and here. (And then you’ll understand why I sometimes throw my arms out like that when Here It Goes Again comes on while I’m running.)

 

 

Heaven help us.

I started running again. I haven’t run in months and my waistline is really starting to tell tales on me. So, now it finally appears that the 100&deathlies have retired for the summer, I laced up my running shoes and took to the streets on Friday after work. Man, did I miss the craziness.

I put myself back on the C25K program, at about the nine-minute walk. And it was a good thing, too. The first night, I was only 2:00 in to my run when I first looked at my watch. At about 4:00 in, I started bargaining with myself. At 5:53, I couldn’t help it: I had to take a break. I walked for almost a minute, sucking in oxygen as fast as I could, and then I started making fun of myself in my head and started running again as soon as I had my breath back. Ah, the self-flagellation – how much I missed it!

It’s funny how many other things remained the same, too. On my second loop around the neighborhood, I remembered to look at the ground where I kept finding all of the loose change last season. And guess what I found? Yep,  a lucky penny. Gracie would ask me here whether it was heads-up or heads-down and would no-kidding hold her breath while she waited for the answer. No fear – it was heads up. Good luck is mine!

So the profiting from running thing is still the same. The crazy adventures? Yep, that’s still happening, too. Sunday morning when I went out for my second run, I saw a white, windowless child-stealer van sitting at the corner across from my house. The engine wasn’t on, but there was a guy sitting in the driver’s seat. I stared at him for a little bit, checked my watch, and stared at him some more so I could be sure he made note that I was making note of him. Or something. I figured if he was still there when I was through running, I’d do something about it. So I took off and did my warm up street, and then did my running thang, and as I looped around, I noticed the van was still there, but my neighbor was now out in his yard. I pulled out my earbuds because he was asking me something. “Was that van here when you came out?” he asked. We have a fair bit of break-ins and car theft in our neighborhood, so naturally he was suspicious. We chatted until I was out of earshot and then I finished my run (much easier than Friday night, thanks for asking). I figured the next loop around, I’d get the guy’s plates, but he was gone. Only guess what? My neighbor had checked them out and he was Homeland Security. Said it on his government plates and his windows apparently had wire mess across them. Total badass. And a little scary that he was hanging out in our neighborhood for no reason and left abruptly. Told you the craziness was still there.

Yep. Not much has changed. Except my muscles have all turned to mush. Three days, two runs, and a bunch of wii-dancing: that would explain the shards of glass in my hips and the general ouchiness in my muscles. Why do we ever let me out the front door?

As always, my timing is impeccable.

Last weekend, after “stealing” the suggestion from Renee and Heather over at Raising Boys World (which I found by way of Firemom over at Stop, Drop, and Blog), I decided to bake a bunch of cookies for our local firefighters. This year is the first year in recent memory that I’ve had the girls on 9/11. I knew I planned to read the 9/11 book I’d bought (the graphic adaptation of the 9/11 Report) and I planned to watch the coverage and I would certainly spend the day remembering and mourning, but…I wanted to do something. Something with the girls that would include 9/11 without having to really explain it to them. I don’t think I’m quite ready to spring all of that on them, although I had resolved to answer straight any question they asked.

So. Cookies! Cookies are an excellent way to thank you. A small token, yes, but I hear it’s a much appreciated one around the fire house. So, Saturday Bee and Gracie and I baked literally dozens of cookies. Chocolate Chip and Mayan Hotties and Peanut Butter Kiss cookies. We filled containers and made a pretty platter and while we were finishing up, I explained that on Sunday when we were delivered the cookies, the girls should tell the firefighters “Thank you for keeping us safe.” Simple. True. And something that would have a much different meaning for the grown-ups than it would for the kiddos. Firefighters (and all first responders) keep us safe. It’s a concept every child has mastered by the time he or she is five. It wasn’t a new concept for my girls. But years from now, when they’ve learned about 9/11 and what it means to our country, I want them to be able to look back and connect the dots. I want Bee and Gracie to understand that saying thank you on 9/11 meant enough to me that I found a way to include them, but at a level that’s right for our family.

So the girls practiced what they would say when we got to the firestation and we had a plan and then….Gracie caught the stomach bug going around and was the Puke Monster all day Sunday. Yeah, so not bringing that to the fire station. “Thanks for keeping us safe, oh, and never mind that smell. Or the kid throwing up behind us.” Yeah, okay. Instead, we waited until Monday right after work. I ran in to pick up the containers and the platter and we drove over to our local station near the park. We found a parking spot, walked up to the door, the girls practiced again what they would say and…then just as the fireman opened the door, the alarm went off.

Of course.

The girls said quick “thank yous” and I handed over the cookies with a “Okay, go keep someone else safe now.” The poor guy felt bad, but the girls didn’t. They thought it was pretty hardcore to see all the action. And when we walked outside back to car, when the door rolled up, all of the firefighters yelled thank you. I thought that was pretty cool. (Hey, some of them were pretty hott!) The girls were more impressed that they got to see the truck zip out with full sirens and lights. Not something you get to see close up everyday.

It wasn’t quite what I had pictured – in fact, I literally didn’t get a single picture. But maybe that’s the point. Sometimes a thank you is just a simple, (mostly) anonymous thank you. …Or maybe we can just have a do-over with the station down the street on the other side of our house.