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June 15, 2005
We’ve discovered the most wonderful ‘toy’ for our outside girl…. The hose. On a slow trickle. No joke Ava probably spent a total of seven hours outside this weekend dragging the hose all over the yard, watering the plants, filling her sand/water table, splashing on the driveway. I shudder to think what our water bill will look like, although the hose was only just barely running it was running for hours. Isn’t it always the case that you buy these child friendly toys and the ones they love the most are the household items that would never occur to you? Naturally our girl needed to make a fashion statement during the weekend water festival. She would only wear her ‘Little Mermaid’ Little Swimmers and her Nemo flip flops she can only just barely walk in. I was chasing her around with SFP 45 but she still managed to have a little tan line around her swimmers by the end of the weekend. Oh and don’t even try to suggest we buy her a watering can. She has one, she loves to fill it, use it, fill it again, use it again but she does all of this with a firm grip on her hose. She is such a stinker. Ava is such an outdoor girl – the good news is during weekends like this she absolutely sleeps like a rock. I love watching her run around like that, wear herself out, burn out that energy. We’ll have to get very creative this winter. John is saying we’re going to clear out our little used family room and bring the molded plastic indoors. I’m not sold on the idea, but I’m getting closer.
Our weekend was otherwise pretty slow, pretty home oriented time. I told John I wanted to get more intentional about planning low cost activities over the weekend. I really dislike coming to the end of the weekend and it feels like all I’ve done is laundry, clean etc… I think this weekend we were a little off because of a Sunday morning obligation John had and that I was out of town last weekend. We did manage a trip to the farmer’s market where Ava showed us her stubborn side (where does she get that?) refusing to ride in the stoller and, oh, by the way, she was going to push the stroller all around the busy market. With NO help from mom or dad. We bribed her with a chocolate croissant and that helped a bit.
As I mentioned above we did a lot of outdoor/yard work this weekend. Our house is newly constructed. Well, relatively newly constructed given that we’ve lived there for four years. At the time we were buying the house we needed something we could move right into, that didn’t need any work and would provide ample room for our family at the time, which was me, John, Meghan, Lane, Koko (our now deceased boxer – we miss her) and Ebony (our cat who you would swear spends her days smoking pot she’s so mellow). We live hard in our poor little house, which now includes a finished basement. Being a homeowner (well, technically the bank owns, but you know what I mean) has taught me there’s no end to the house projects. The saddest part of our house right now has to be the yard and the deck. When we moved into the house there was not one little speck of landscaping – not a tree, flower, shrub or bush. It was a square piece of grass. The builders had done us the enormous favor of scraping off all the topsoil before they planted the grass, so you could quite literally fire pots in the clay that passes for dirt underneath the grass. I love to putter in the yard and over the past four years we’ve put in three flower/plant beds, cleared a space by the house for a small garden, planted some creeping Phlox on the parking and put some pretty Russian sage around our mailbox. The weeds can get away from us in a nano-second and still looks like we haven’t done much. The deck, don’t even get me started. It is roughly the size of a play pen. Earlier this year John got it in his head that he could expand the deck by himself. Blessedly he has now freed himself of that belief and we are exploring hiring someone to do it for us.
But we spent quite a bit of time this weekend cleaning out the largest of our flower beds and putting in some new plants and flowers, spreading mulch and the like. It is more of a project than you might imagine since we have to add topsoil, structure, peat etc… to try to break up all the clay. The bed is on the South side of our house and the sun bakes it during the summer. I am fond of the very easy to grow variety of plants and flowers (my mother refers to these things as ‘ditch plants’ because they grow anywhere), so we’ve put in day lilies, some ornamental grasses, vincas, brown eyed Susans, daisies… I think it looks very pretty. We also finally potted some herbs we like to grow. We have tomatoes, thyme, chives and cilantro in the ground, but we pot basil and mint. The basil because it never seems to do as well in the ground (for us) and the mint because left to its own devices it will take over the neighborhood. Thanks to Ava and some rain these plants are now extremely well watered. Hopefully their roots aren’t too soggy.
After I went through 21 hours of horrible, awful, no good, very bad labor I didn’t think that anything would ever really hurt me again. I was wrong. Saturday night John, Ava and I were horsing around on the couch, singing songs, playing and joking. John picked Ava up by her thighs and was holding her steady – a little activity they’ve done oh maybe 100 times before. John and Ava swung her big noggin’ around and cracked me right on the nose. I thought I was going to pass out. I was weeping, Ava was certainly more startled than hurt and she felt terrible that I was crying. She kept trying to give me her nannie. John was beside himself – he kept apologizing, brought me Motrin and an ice pack. Fortunately there was only a little bit of bleeding and the bruising around my nose is probably only noticeable to me – especially once I put on some light foundation. Wow did that hurt. Ava’s noggin is now officially a dangerous weapon.
I just finished a great book – a memoir that reads like fiction, sort of, called ‘Hypocrite in a Poofy White Dress.” The author is Susan Gilman. She writes about growing up in New York with hippie liberal parents – but that’s not what the book is really about. She does a great job of capturing the memories and eccentricities of young girls, teenagers and women. I loved it, gobbled it up in just a few days. I’ve been trying to read ‘Perfect Madness – Mothering in a Time of Anxiety’ by Judith Warner, but I just can’t seem to get through it. I think I’m going to take it back to the library. The book just depresses me. I know it has been the subject of much debate and discussion in mothering circles. And maybe as it comes to conclusion I would feel better than I have for the first 100 pages. But all it does is make me feel like I’m either doing too much with my daughter or not enough. And that I certainly don’t have the support I’m entitled to from my community, my family and my partner. No doubt being a mom is the most complex role I am likely to ever undertake, but I guess I need more reassurance that what I’m doing is right, that it works for me, that I know my daughter… Being one of those obsessive information gatherers can be a good, yet bad thing. I’m trying to at least know when to say when. And I think it’s time to drop this book in the return bin at the library.
I’ve started a new book I read about on Powells.com (fab book lover site) called ‘Case Histories’ by Kate Atkinson. I’m only a few chapters in, but it is so well written and engaging. It is a mystery that weaves together three stories of very tragic loss. The set up was so well written it was a little bit difficult to read. In fact, the night I started the book I got up to check on Ava twice before I went to sleep and one more time during the night. (Did anyone else think that would go away once our babies weren’t babies anymore? It sure hasn’t for me.) I bring it up both for the recommendation and to talk a little bit about some of the worry that comes with being a mom. Broadly, I am sure there isn’t anyone who hasn’t heard about the young woman who’s missing in Aruba – on a well chaperoned high school trip. Meghan is currently on a class trip to France and it takes not one bit of energy to put myself in the shoes of this family who are awaiting word on what has happened to their daughter. More locally, there have been a number of young people who have been killed in car accidents in our community in the past couple of months. None were driving under the influence or even recklessly. Each story is a heartbreak that makes me want to seal Meghan, Lane and Ava into a impermeable bubble so they will stay safe and well. I try to control the worry, the anxiety because it can be draining and not the least bit helpful to the people I love. I know I come by this honestly because I have vivid memories of my grandfather calling everyone he knew any time there was bad weather or a siren. Each day I try to remain grateful for my good fortune and offer prayers for the safety of those I love. What more can any of us do? While I’ve always been a world champion worrier, being a mom has elevated my skills to new heights!
I’ve been working on my job search since the legislature adjourned and am feeling dismayed by my progress, or lack of it, to be more precise. I have resumes out; I’ve had one fairly positive interview for a position I am sort of interested in, but nothing else. It is sort of depressing. I am also much more nervous about this job transition than any other I’ve undertaken, which I am attributing directly to the changes in my life since the last time I did the laps looking for work. My last job search took place when I was newly married, but John hadn’t yet decided on law school and was still employed. I didn’t have Ava, I wasn’t staring down the face of two kids in college, the kids were covered under their mother’s health insurance, we didn’t have a mortgage. Now I feel the crushing weight of the responsibility of caring for my family – I know I am not in this alone, but this transition that I am attempting to undertake has more baggage associated than any time in the past. I just feel stuck, nervous, wishing something would break open, but then not wanting to jump too quickly at a less than ideal opportunity. The blessings of me apparently are supreme amounts of the worry gene, coupled nicely with a lack of patience.
Sunday morning John was gone for several hours and Ava and I were milling about the house, just the two of us. We watched ‘Nemo’ (of course) and when I turned it off CBS Sunday morning came up. Ava was playing with her puzzles and I was watching the show with one eye, reading the paper and keeping an eye on her. They did a story on the new Batman movie and seemingly out of nowhere Ava absolutely freaked out, starting crying and was clearly terrified by the images on the screen. I didn’t even know she was watching it. I quickly turned the television off and pulled her into my lap. We said ‘no Batman, don’t scare Ava’ and I assured her Batman was ‘all gone.’ She proceeded to curl up against me on the couch for a half an hour, dozing, letting me play with her hair, rub her back. We talked a very little and mostly cuddled. To some this would unremarkable, but I am the mother of one of the busiest little girls ever born. She has never been an especially cuddly baby. She is loving and affectionate, but very on the go. I laid there with my girl in my arms and just felt this wave of emotion with all the joy and wonder of the privilege of being her mom. But for goodness sake several days later and she’s still talking about Batman. Last night John finally just suggested that we ignore her when she brings him up. Poor kid!
Last night Ava was messing around with us, doing silly faces and playing before dinner. We sat down to eat and we were all talking, enjoying our dinner. As is fairly typical for our girl, when she’s done she starts to play with her food. We all have our pet peeves (mine is when she climbs up on the table) but John HATES it when she starts to put her hands in her glass of milk, juice, water…. He told her firmly to stop. She kept doing it. He told her again and what do you know, she didn’t stop doing it. John sternly said, ‘Ava, you’re all done with the milk’ and took it away. Ava tried to make a silly face, but really couldn’t for some reason. As John got up from the table with her milk Ava said ‘Silly all gone, milk all done.’ It totally cracked me up. I suppose it would be a bit confusing for a little one to know when they can be silly and when they can’t. Although she knew perfectly well what she was doing with the milk. If she can remember Batman for four days she can certainly remember that basic rule! But it still cracked me up.
On that note, I think I’ll share a ‘recipe’ (using that term loosely) for a very tasty salad one of my girlfriends made while we were in AZ. The reason I use the term loosely is because the quantities are imprecise and certainly could be adjusted to your taste. The combo might sound a little bit odd, but it really was good – a nice way to get some good greens in with minimal effort and kind of a nice presentation. I’ve made it twice since I’ve been home. The only downside is it doesn’t keep well.
A little post script – I finally updated Ava’s website and will post the link on my TTM board.
Thanks for reading—
--Kate
1 bag prepared greens – I like the spinach/radicchio combination, but you could really use anything you like – I think the mixed greens/field greens would stand up to the flavors the best
1 small package crumbled feta
1 small can mandarin oranges, drained –I think they taste better in the salad when they are chilled
1 package of Ramen noodles, toasted, throw the seasoning packet away
slivered almonds, toasted (I buy the small pre-slivered almonds)
some green onions, chopped
store bought poppy seed dressing – buy good quality – the one I have is like T Mazzeritti’s or something – very nice
Combine everything in the proportions that taste good to you.
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