Ten Years

This is what our table looks like when Jim is working on his bike in the kitchen and we own three kids. 

See that book laying there? It's just a normal book, but it has made me think think think about what I'm "like" as a mother, person, friend, wife - compared to ten years ago.

Ten years ago I wasn't a mom, but I was a dog owner and a high school teacher. 

We were also renting an apartment and the first few days of living in that apartment, our gas/heat wasn't hooked up, so we went to the community hot tub to "bathe" every night. ha! Aren't I the most disgusting person? I can't believe I did that. I can't believe I'm letting you read that I did that. 

But that's what I'm talking about. I don't believe I would have done such a thing if I was in that situation now. Please tell me I wouldn't.

Now I am a home owner. I have three kids. When no one else is looking, me and Jim still do and say immature things, and we say "when are we going to stop thinking that's funny?". 

But in ten years, we have also gleaned so much wisdom and responsibility, and for me, fear. 

 I welcomed that fear into my life when Avery was in my belly for about 7 months. We were watching "I Am Legend", and the part where the dog dies? (spoiler alert) was so...sharp to me. I casually walked upstairs right in the middle of that movie, went to my knees by my bed and bawled. I prayed that Avery would be born safely, and that I could have her, and she would be mine. 

So what kind of a mother am I now? Do my kids like being around me? Do I frown and clench my teeth too often? Do I ignore them? Do I smother them with hugs and kisses, then tell them to shoo? Do I get so excited for them to walk in the door? Do I feel defeated during meal times?

Yes yes yes.

Tonight, all three wanted my undivided. 

I was reading with Evan, and he was chatty chatting telling me something important about the race car driver in the picture,

Avery was right there telling me how far down her spelling list she got today with Trishna,

and Andrew was standing by me on the couch, putting the remote up to my ear pretending it was a telephone.

All this at the same, loud, time.

And they were all mad at me because I wasn't listening to just them. 

(oh ps, Jim is in Vegas until Friday doing recurrent training, so there's no other parent around.)

I just kind of sat there, staring. I didn't know, in that moment, how to make them all happy.

It's wonderful to be so loved. It really is. 

So what is my thesis here? What is my point? 

I guess it's that: in many ways I am proud of the mom I am right now,

and in many ways I am disappointed with the mom I am right now.

Regarding housekeeping:  am I too uptight ? or am I too sloppy? 

Lately this house has been soo messy - top to bottom - messy. 

I am not a micromanager when it comes to my kids' playing and cleaning. I let them do their thing and then we are left stepping over the messes for days. 

 My 36 year old self is/was sick of constant messy house. All my life I've been ok with a general mess, but something has shifted.

So, I came up with a solution - at 7:00pm my phone alarm goes off, we stop what we are doing, and clean up. We have 15 minutes to clean, and at the end of the 15 minutes, whatever is left on the floor gets put away on the top shelf of my closet for one entire month. 

This is booorrrring. I know. But it's interesting (to me) to see the shift in my tolerance for things. This is a piece of chaos that I can control that makes my home more calm.

PS here is what is written on that notebook laying there next to a sleeping-in-the-hallway Avery.

He snuck a nap in, cuddled up to me on the couch. 

I hope he knows I'm not paying for this.

This is volunteer work.

Here is something I am also tolerating:

Avery brought home a flier about the upcoming science fair and wants to participate. It's an optional activity. Not mandatory.

I groaned, then told her if she wants to do one, she has to do it all by herself.

I will encourage. I will NOT participate. 

Her idea is to make a volcano! 

Original, right?

So today after school she practiced, and I'm really hoping this satisfies her desire to do an actual project. This 30 minutes of experimenting was perfectly valuable and good enough for me. 

After the science experiment, they went upstairs and played school. My heart soars when they do this. It's so secretly educational and cooperative and creative. 

My current "mom stance" on my kids coming home and doing real actual homework: nope. no way. I will not force my kids to do homework at this age. 

Luuuuuckkily, their teachers don't send or believe in homework either. 

(except reading. we read every night, but i would do that even if it wasn't assigned)

Evan's hair.

Alright, I'm wrapping this up. I get really long winded when Jim is out of town. It's like I'm pillow talking with whoever is out there listening.

So, we've lived in this home for almost 9 months. 

Behind the blinds of the front window - about eye level - there is a soft and pillowy cobweb that floats up and down every time I peek out the window. 

It's been there for almost the whole 9 months and is accumulating a handful of little flies and gnats and the like. 

By now, it would be a betrayal to remove that Larsen Cobweb, wouldn't it?

One time G and G Larsen were here visiting, and Grandpa pointed it out after he looked out the window. I laughed and confirmed that, yes I know all about that darn cob web.

Then Grandma Larsen told me that Grandma Cook ALSO has a spider web of her own in the corner of her kitchen window. She checks up on its existence every once in a while, fascinated by the construction of the thing.

Then one day her Granddaughter was there visiting Grandma Cook. She noticed the web in the corner of the window, and generously took a tissue and wiped it away. 

 I love Grandma Cook. I imagine she enjoyed watching the efforts of that spider, enjoyed the reliability of that spider. I bet she was a touch bummed that her pet spider was unknowingly "cleaned up". 

To sum up: 

it wouldn't hurt if I were a tad bit more neurotic on the house keeping front...

it wouldn't hurt if I unfurrowed my brow and paid more attention to my sweet kids. 

And Then

Andrew quit naps. He walked into my office and turned in his resignation notice. 

No explanation or anything. 

Which is strange because he obviously still needs to nap. Sometimes he falls asleep on the floor.

Not sure why he thought it would be a good idea to quit. 

We are on to book 4 in Harry Potter. 

Evan keeps saying he is going to Russia on his mission. 

He takes the globe and points to Russia and tells us all about it.

He is a chatter box lately. Chat. Ter. Box. on and on and on.

When he sleeps with his stuffie "snake snake", he coils it up in a circle and lays it right next to his pillow.

One day he said to me "you're so cuddly. can I keep you?'

The other night, the boys were asleep, me and Jim were laying in our most comfiest bed, and Avery was lingering in the bath tub. She started singing a made up song we could hear from our room. We chuckled. It went on for at least 30 minutes. I wrote some of it down:

"Hey here out loud with meeeee,

you gather around me also,

you know it's me, it's both of us!

together, gliding across the room.

Say hello to your future sister (or brother)

we go together hey ayayay

you sing out loud whenever the crowd

oh oh oh 

you see me glide across the room with you 

we are best friends together and forever 

oh oh oh 

what you say about the waves 

we can go swimming across the sea or across the room

together."

I subbed for Mr. Crabtree. 

I love that Avery is a "helpful student". 

She sure is. 

I loved watching her be a student. Yeah, I know she's my child so I'm extra biased, but she's just so smart and kind and on task and friendly and chats with her classmates appropriately then gets back to work. She's brave and assertive and not afraid to participate, but not a know-it-all interrupter. 

For show and tell she brought her mermaid tail.

She told all about it, then said, 

"let me guess, you want me to put it on?"

and they all erupted "yes!"

I wasn't expecting that, but I whipped out my camera phone and videoed it. Oh yeah, of course I did.

It was so funny. They all gathered around, then I sent them back to their seats so everyone could see.

She went with her friend to the climbing gym. She wasn't even scared.

This is Andrew freelance napping in my bed.

A pro bono nap.

Jim is back in the mountain biking scene.

 He looked his busted shoulder in the eyes and told it he wasn't afraid.

On Martin Luther King Jr day, he went riding while the rest of us went to Padden Park,

I have this irrational fear that one day I will have to go mountain biking on one of these totally hard trails.

I have that same fear that I will have to be on Jeopardy,

and that one day I will have to be a waitress. 

I'm not prepared for any of those! It's stressful. 

It was freezing, so after a while, me and Andrew took it to the car while the big kids continued to ride the slide tandem.

Then we went home, got cleaned up, and went to dinner at Paso.

It was a good MLK day. I love not making dinner. 

I'm 36

My birthday was such a great day. There was so much love from all of my kids. They are so good at making a person feel special on their birthday.

The morning of my birthday, I lay in bed because I love my giant, soft, fluffy bed so much. I came across a video on the internet that showed a perspective of our earth compared to the rest of the galaxy and the galaxy of galaxies. 

I started the morning feeling so small, trying to wrap my brain around space and how teeny tiny we are here on the planet earth and specifically, me in my comfy bed on Sagebrush lane.

And yet, our feelings and importance is so real and big! How much I love my kids and Jim, how much I worry about them, how much we plan and organize and do for the people we love is huge even though we are the smallest of small in our universe. 

Have you seen how big the sun is compared to the earth? Well it turns out the SUN is actually really tiny. 

How can we be so small and so big at the same time? 

.....

I had a dream the other day that I was in charge of someone's baby,

and I put that baby in a crib in a room with the door closed,

I eventually realize I had left that baby in there alone for 24 hours.

I woke up in serious distress - physical distress. 

It bothered me so much that I had left a baby alone for so long. I rolled over and told Jim about how terrible that dream was.

.....

I am in the middle of reading "All the Light We Cannot See",

and it the most beautiful book I have read in so long. 

I only want to read it with my quiet, full attention so that I don't miss a single beautiful sentence, so I  have to wait for "down time" in my day. 

Plus I don't want it to end. I don't want it to be over. I savor every beautiful sentence. 

It is a WWII novel. I can't believe we are still spinning yarns out of that time in history, but we are. 

Survival stories are my favorite, and these war stories are very much survival stories to me. 

Here is why I love survival stories: The characters are stripped of everything in the whole world, and all we are left with is their character and wit and personality. 

There is no internet or phone availability. Those options are boring. No, instead we have a human being and their ingenuity, and their battle with the cruel world - what life they can eek out, focused only on what they love most - what maters most. 

So this book...the descriptions are so new and beautiful, and because the girl is blind, so much has to be described through her "eyes". It's marvelous.

Poetry is used to explain science. Science and poetry equals fantastic.

Example: there is a character who loves bird watching, and he has a giant Audubon bird book. Audubon spent years studying birds; after observing the life of the bird, he kills it, spread its wings out just so, and uses it as a model to paint a picture for his book. 

(then he would eat the bird)

"Werner tries to see what Frederick sees: a time before photography, before binoculars. And here was someone willing to tramp out into a wilderness brimming with the unknown and bring back paintings. A book not so much about birds as full as evanescence, of blue-winged, trumpeting mysteries."

I'm fascinated by what life was like before the internet...let alone photography and binoculars. Can you imagine? Some people lived in a time where communication and information did not happen at the flick of a screen. 

Tramping through mysteries, in muddy boots, to record information with pen and paper and drawings...

The night before my birthday, 

oh, around bedtime, 

Avery decided to paint me a secret picture. I really had to "let go" of my desire for all my children to be tucked in neatly at 8:00 sharp and let her work on this secret project. 

She asked me what my favorite animal is. I hastily, annoyed-ly, replied, "uh...giraffe",

and this is what she created. 

I love it.

Although, she wishes that penguins were my favorite animal because she "knows how to paint those". 

Andrew Is 3

Darn it, he turned three. 

Now I have to stop treating him like a baby, and we will need to potty train soon, and end the pasi relationship. Darn.

I'm not sure I will be able to stop cradling him, kissing him, squishing him. 

When he is done with a bath, I wrap him in a towel, pick him up like a large burrito, and ask in the mirror, "who's that?"

and he says, "Didoo and Mommy"

Then we chant "Didoo and Mommy" all the way down the hall to his bedroom to get dressed. 

A birthday card from Evan.

Yep, 3 year olds are my favorite to sing happy birthday to. 

They are unsuspecting, "who me?" 

and then they realize that they are the center of the attention, they do the most adorable things.

Andrew belted out his song with the rest of us, then tried to blow out the candles by making the fffffff sound. I giggled, "not even close!" and then we all helped blow them out.

He's our little baby brother. 

 We had brownies and home made ice cream. Jim dug into the brownies before he was allowed/supposed to.

Maybe it's because his birthday is so close to Christmas and I'm burnt out, but his birthdays are always so simple and small. I barely got some bunting strung on the walls the morning of, minutes before he woke up. 

Or maybe I just don't want my littlest to grow up. None of us want him to. The kids were really worried that he would be able to pronounce their names correctly the day he turned three. 

Boy do I love him so so much. 

Playing School

Avery is into playing school lately.

She has been planning and prepping for days.

Our desks.

She made huge "packets" for me and Jim to work on.

We learned about Alaska and Florida.

Tonight was the most organized performance. She had all four of us as students.

She had the whole school day planned.

When it was time to shift to a new activity, she would ring the triangle.

While we were working on our packets, she was sitting at her desk twiddling her thumbs and said, 

"does Mr. Crabtree get bored?"

I laughed and laughed. She's so funny. 

Some of the packets instructed us to: Make your own dot to dot, Draw a self portrait, word problems, math problems, mazes. 

She's been working so hard on it.

The three year old did whatever he wanted to.

We got called to rug time, circled up, and talked about Utah.

Then we went back to our seats and had to draw something that you would find in Utah.

Evan's is "my grandma and grandpa live there and there are lots of rocks and lots of sunshine" (he's so smart!)

Jim's drawing is his childhood home.

It was right around bed time when we stopped for the evening, right after we "ate lunch". Avery packed us all lunches - banana, roll, and orange. 

January First Two Thousand Sixteen

On the very first day of the brand new year,

I put about ten layers on each kid, loaded two boxes full of warm outer wear, then we drove up the mountain to where the snow is. We parked it at Silver Lake.

Avery loved finding different slopes to sled down,

Evan loved eating giant globs of snow, while looking contemplatively around,

and Andrew stood there and whined, then stood there and stared, then stood there and whined.

It was good to get out in the cold, fresh air and throw snow at each other. 

Eventually our cheap sled cracked and fell apart. 

We threw it in a dumpster before making our way back down the mountain.

Inevitably Evan had to poop, so we stopped at a Subway to use their bathroom.

I enjoyed this view out my window while we waited.

Andrew's all: hi! 

He's almost a three year old, if you didn't know.

Some goals and projects for the year of 2016:

1. Go on more outings like this with my family. All three kids are getting camelbaks for their birthdays, and I intend to put them to use. 

2. Landscape the back yard. Here is a "before" picture. Can't wait to show you the after.

3. Be prepared for an emergency.

Oh, hi. Have you ever heard of the Cascadia Subduction Zone? It's real.

The other night, December 28, me and Jim were laying in bed and felt a minor earthquake shake our house.  I jumped up and stood in the kids' rooms for a few minutes, evaluating my readiness for a real emergency. 

If we live here during the "big one", we will be ok, but it could be weeks before supplies and help got to us due to all the bridge and viaduct systems.

The next morning, we bought a more satisfactory water storage situation - a 55 gallon drum.

 Our current water storage is the one and a half packages of Costco water bottles you see there on the floor.

By the end of the year I will show you our organized garage and our emergency preparedness station. I just need to get: a machine gun, another semi automatic gun, a shot gun, and a grenade launcher. 

I don't even know how to crack that joke because I don't really know the names of guns and stuff that survivalists stockpile. But trust me, I did my best to crack a funny joke for comic relief.

PS Jim recently stacked our recycle boxes thusly. Aren't recycle bins the worst? 

But that system makes me happy. 

4. Make my bed every day.

So far I am 1 for 3 at making my bed....

***

I can't believe it's time to start school again. 

These two weeks flew by and dragged on. 

I loved it, I couldn't wait for it to end. 

I needed their excitement, I wanted them to be still. 

I sent them to bed in my exhaustion, I lingered by their beds when they slept.

Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. 

(I am large, I contain multitudes)