My OMG Day

There are just some days of mommyhood that are better left to die in the black hole of forgetfulness that is my brain.
However, the events (100% Toby-generated) that occurred today are almost too unbelievable--not that they happened, but that they all happened in a 12-hour time frame. I will admit willingly that a few of these things have occurred at one point or another as Toby has gained independence. Today I think he flat-out declared war against any kind of sensible parenting. And no, it never occurred to me to get the camera out for any of these real-life situations.

• First offense of the day: About 5 minutes before we head out the door for Bible study (aka, my work) I have Norah in the high chair eating pears and Toby eating peanut butter toast. I go into the bathroom to grab a hair tie and walk back into the kitchen to find: Toby on the kitchen table with his head dripping wet. What did he pour onto his head? Norah's bowl of pears with the pear juice. Oh joy. Strip Toby of his shirt, dunk him in the shower, get him a new shirt, have him serve a time-out, and get out the door all in record time.
  
• Second: After nap time we decide to drive over to the local library (our usual Wednesday afternoon outing). At the library all seems to go well. Leaving the library Toby couldn't have been any more perfect. There was one kid throwing a major fit while Toby innocently says "OK" at my suggestion to leave. Outside the library Toby gets a bad idea. While I'm loading Norah and buckling her in Toby thinks it's totally appropriate to climb on top of the car--ALL the way onto the roof. Don't ask me how or why that happened. I drag him down from the roof of my car and in a panic tell him "That's not safe!" over and over again. Back home for another time out session (with some serious temper tantrums on the way to his car seat--apparently he thought the roof was a great place to be).
  
• My mission now is to get Tantrum Toby inside for a time-out without him running all over the yard. So sweet Norah (who will probably earn a post like this in another two and a half years) stays in the car while I drag and carry 45-pound Toby inside. Note: this is probably why my wrist is so sore I couldn't lift my saute pan tonight to cook dinner. More on dinner later. Toby doesn't want to go to time out saying things like "Time out makes me angry" and "You hurt my feelings." So I set the timer anyway and then go back to get Norah out of the car. I pick her up out of her car seat and then come around the car to find: Toby outside with his pants down...pooping? I have no idea. (Did I mention he's already peed outside on our front steps once today?) All the better to spank, I say. I run in and put Norah down, race outside and scoop up Toby (we'll leave the poop outside, if there is any thank you very much) and bring him back in for time out.
• And the last horror of the day: Norah finally decides to escape the war zone (we have overcome the time-out tantrums and have earned back our books from the library--I think we've come to a truce about the earlier incidents) and takes a nap. She times this choice to align perfectly as I start to prep dinner. I whisk her away to her peaceful crib (wishing I could fit in there and escape too) and come out listening to the sound of pitter-pattering feet running away from the kitchen. Hmmmm... this is like a horror movie: don't go in the kitchen!!! So I decide to find Toby first (under the dining room table) and lead him into the kitchen first. What do I find? He has "helped" me make dinner by pouring two entire bottles of herbs into my saute pan (which already had olive oil in it). So now we're having a bottle of sage and a bottle of thyme mixed with a little bit of chicken for dinner. Yummy. What do I do? Throw in some garlic, salt, and pepper and call it herb-rubbed chicken. Toby's a better cook than I'll ever be (the chicken came out great; BJ rescued it with an awesome mushroom sauce).
  

At the end of the day Norah is enjoying some free roaming time and Toby is...not getting into trouble, actually. I am trying to zone out for 15 seconds before the next wave (bedtime) hits. Toby comes in and says "Mom, Norah's in the bathroom!" where she's not supposed to be. He runs out of the room to go get her and (I swear) he says "Come on, you're a hero." Three little words that couldn't feel more true had they been spoken by God. My son (and I) made it through this day alive and he still thinks I'm a hero.

My Nap-Head

Norah wakes up with crazy nap hair. She's not too sure about what we think is so funny.

My January Reading List

I realized that my summary of this blog states that I'm a part-time librarian and "wish-I-had-more time" reader. Luckily, in January I had a big chunk of time to devote to reading (mostly because BJ was off of school and around more to keep an eye on the kids while I got lost in a book).
Here's what I read:
I re-read the entire "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. Then I did something I've been wanting to do for years: I watched all three (extended) versions of the movies. I didn't do a marathon (which would have entailed about 12 hours in front of the TV) but watched one movie a week for three weeks. They were great. And it reminded me of just how much I loved the books the first time I read them. And this time I picked up so much more. They are true classics and have a way of sucking you in to a world that seems far more real than make-believe.
I read, based on the strong recommendation of my father-in-law, "Good Omens" by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. I thought this was the first time I had read Neil Gaiman but a friend pointed out that he wrote the children's book "Coraline" which I read on Thanksgiving (literally--it only took a day). I enjoyed that book (which has been made into a movie) but I loved "Good Omens." It was hilarious. I laughed out loud several times. Very cleverly written! Thanks for the recommendation!
Then I read "Sarah's Key." This was a fiction book recommended to me by a mom whose son is also in Toby's gym class. I wish I could say more about the mom because I really like her, but I don't even know her name. We "met" last semester during our kids' class; she was reading "New Moon" and was--she later said--a week away from having a baby. We've chatted off and on about Stephenie Meyer books and the Twilight movie. I'm embarrassed that I've let our conversations go so far without knowing her name that now it seems too late to ask. Silly me. Anyway, she said "Sarah's Key" was a great read, fast and engaging like "Twilight." Well while it was nothing like "Twilight" it was a good, fast story about a journalist living in Paris who researches the Vel d'Hiv roundup of Jewish families during the War. She gets involved in the story of one family that has connections to her own in weird ways. I kept thinking the story was going to go in another direction but I was happy with the way it ended up. The weird thing about this book is that I started reading it before we had finalized plans for our trip to Paris. Once we had settled on the decision that I would go with BJ to Europe it made the places in the book (Paris and Burgundy--both on our itinerary) jump off the pages. I'm very excited to visit the city she talks about in this book. (And on a side note, I read lots of books that are not like "Twilight" and I don't measure all of my book choices against that one.)
Lastly, I've been reading the organizational book "Never Check Your Email in the Morning." Kind of silly for a full-time mom to be reading, but I've actually taken away a lot of info about how to manage BJ's school and teaching schedules and to-do lists along with the day-to-day tasks of running our household. It's given me a handful of ideas on what I would do differently if/when I do return to the working world outside our home. Hopefully the strategies I implement from this book will help us to have a less hectic and more organized semester. :)

Now we're already halfway through February and I'm looking for books to take to Europe next month. I'm thinking about taking "The Dreams of my Father" by Obama. Maybe that will get us started talking to some locals on interesting topics. Last time we went to Europe when Bush was starting his 2nd term we had some rousing political discussions with both ex-pats and Spaniards on the American President.

My Pictures from January

Norah and Lincoln on a shopping trip to the GAP (she's taking crackers from his tray).

Toby in the cockpit of the plane coming back from Denver.

Norah getting herself stuck inside the rails of a chair at home.

Toby shoveling snow--with a real shovel--at my parent's house.

My "Snow" Day

Some of you may have heard the news about the snow and ice storm that socked New England with tons of, well, snow and ice. We did get bad weather on Wednesday, but not what we're used to. We woke up to canceled school (BJ actually had his classes canceled in Storrs) and work (my Bible study cancels meetings if school is delayed or canceled). So did we all get to sleep in and then go outside and make snowmen or have a snowball fight? Nope. We had sleet and freezing rain here on the coast. Wednesday afternoon I bundled the kids all up to go out and instead of a nice blanket of puffy snow we sloshed through slushy mud to get to the car. Toby was really confused because I had packed him into his snowsuit. "Why am I all wet?" was his question. "Because it's raining and not snowing" I had to answer. He seemed to think this was weird. So did I.

My "Stay at Home" Mentality

If people out here ask what I do I say I'm a full-time mom instead of a stay-at-home mom. This is not to say that moms who hold jobs in addition to raising kids are in some way not full-time moms. They are more like massively underpaid overtime moms I think. It's just a way of pointing out that while I work from home I don't actually get a paycheck and I don't stay home every day watching soap operas and eating Bon Bons (I don't even watch Oprah). Ask me how much of the inauguration coverage I got to hear (the TV was on all day, regardless of whether or not I got to sit and listen to anything) while staying at home and you'll see that life at home can be just as distracting as life in an office. So my rewards and incentives have to come from the little things. The fact that I don't have a dress code--hooray for sweats on a chilly, cloudy day!--counts for a lot when contemplating the benefits of being a full-time mom. While I don't stay at home all the time, there are some days where I just enjoy the "quietude" of our little house and the fact that I can enjoy my kids on their schedule. Today after Norah's morning nap, for example, we walked down to Jupiter Point beach and threw shells into the water. Toby had a blast all bundled up in his snow suit trudging through the dirty snow on the side of the road. He jumped in almost every puddle on the way there and slid across every icy driveway possible.
The other day we baked cookies and took a plate next door to the construction workers. Our neighbor (back from 6 months on a sub) is getting an addition put on and the workers provide a lot of entertainment for Toby (the construction part, not the language part, although they are pretty mindful when they actually see us out and about).
We're looking into preschools for Toby and BJ and I are kind of divided on what to look for. He thinks that Toby should take 2 years of preschool and then start kindergarten reading. I feel like he needs more socialization and organized play time and the reading will come along just fine. Right now he's in his room pouring through a bag of new library books. He loves to read already. (Side note: we're sick of Toby's bed time stretching out until 9 or 9:30 so we're starting the process of dropping precious nap time....more on that later.) We'll see what middle ground we reach by the time Toby's 4 and we actually start him in a program.

My Favorites (#1 really)

I love getting the mail. I don't know why. Maybe it's just the little break I get to have walking outside in the fresh (read: frigid) air. Maybe it's the anticipation that I'll actually get something addressed to me (at 930 Shennecossett Rd. Groton, CT 06340). Maybe it's just the fact that every few days or so I can look forward to a new movie from Netflix (I think the last Lord of the Rings movie is coming today).

Edit: There was actually no first "My Favorites" post, so I changed the title of this one. More to come, I'm sure, but they are mostly just random thoughts in random order.