Wordle wordle
Long time, no update, I know. Between work, school, kids and getting ready for Christmas…blog? What blog?
Yet, somehow, I had time to Wordle.
Hugging trees makes children sleepy
The kids have been making us a little crazy lately, so we decided to try doing something new today. We went to visit the Cumming Nature Center in Honeoye Falls.
Our plan was several-fold:
- It’s an hour drive away — farther than we’d usually go for a hike in the woods, but this ate up 2 hours of our morning while our children were safely strapped into their car seats
- It would tire them out, so they’d nap (this has been an issue since the Binky Fairy visited Duncan 10 days ago)
- It’s outdoors — and we all could use more nature and tree hugging.
Speaking of tree hugging, when I see my children voluntarily go up to a tree and literally hug it — with no prompting or demonstration on my part — I know I’m doing something right as a parent. They do get outdoors to enjoy the natural world (as much as is natural in a city) a lot more than I do and I know that’s so important for them. At least if they’re on a playground or playing in our tiny backyard, they’re outside, and children can find the beauty and wonder of nature in anything. Often it seems to be in the rocks they insist on bringing home. Or the mulch they must repeatedly put on the bottom of the slides.
In any case, we managed to all get in the car and drive there without incident. Duncan actually fell asleep a few minutes before we got there. That’s what happens when you insist on waking up befor 6 a.m. We wandered around for a while, looked at a pioneer log cabin and read some signs about how the native Irondequoit used to live and then carried the crying, dragging little ones back to the car.
We found a diner for lunch. It was the first time I sent food back to the kitchen. I ordered a roast beef sandwich and my beef was green. Yes, green. Beef is not a vegetable. It shouldn’t be green. Amazingly, we finished lunch and packed everyone back into the car — where they fell asleep on the way home. We ran errands while they slept (Kevin stayed in the car with them, don’t worry! But we were out already and just used up 2 hours’ of gas) and got home with them still sleeping. I hung out with them and read in the car for a while until they each woke up.
It doesn’t seem like much of a fascinating day, and it was a lot of driving for a walk in the woods. Next time, we’ll pick somewhere closer to home and keep the hiking short. I’m glad that Berry is finally getting old enough to take on a walk like that, as I’ve always envisioned spending so much more time outdoors with the kids than I tend to actually do. It gives me hope for future weekend activities.
At lunch, we talked about our favorite part of the walk. Kevin saw a knarly tree that he liked, Duncan liked stepping on the tree roots. Berry — well, she’s 18 months old, she doesn’t give us much in the way of descriptive sentences yet. Me? I liked the part where we walked along a stream and all stopped and got quiet enough to hear the water flowing below us. There was stillness, suddenly, finally. I closed my eyes and could feel the woods around me and hear my own thoughts, finally given the space in my head.
Even after we got home and I was trying to decipher the TV show that Berry was asking me to put on, I looked in her eyes and she seemed different to me, somehow. Maybe we’d just spent some good time together. Maybe tromping around in the woods and hearing some stillness was good for her, too.
Getting the yard work done — with kiddo help
I’ll admit that sometimes I don’t know how best to entertain two lively little ones once naptime (or school) is over. Berry often wakes up grumpy and Duncan doesn’t always nap at pre-school, so he’s on the road to meltdown city some afternoons.
I’ll also admit that we tend to turn to the TV a bit too much. But, in mid-meltdown, as one child hands you the remote and the other grunts something about Little Einsteins, it’s easy to click it on and play something from the DVR just for some peace (and a chance to drink a cup of tea while it’s still warm).
Today, however, after only one episode of the intrepid foursome and their friend, Rocket, we went outside. Kevin was finishing painting the garage, and today was apparently the last nice day of the year. It’s already much colder now.
I don’t know what inspired me to climb into the back of the garage and grab the rakes. It certainly wasn’t Berry fussing and whining at the garden gate the moment I disappeared. Or maybe it was. In any case, I faithfully reappeared, as promised multiple times in the 45 seconds I was gone, and started raking.
I wasn’t allowed to rake alone. Of course not. Mummy was doing something. Let’s do it too! “Mummy, I want a rake,” Duncan demanded. After getting him to ask for it nicely (”Please may I have a rake, Mummy?”), I consented, gave the other one to Berry, too, and let them get to work.
They did quite nicely — for at least 4 minutes. Inevitably, of course, the pile of leaves was too tempting and had to be plundered. Berry was very entertained wading through it, leaving a trail of leaves in her wake. Duncan preferred throwing his leaves, scattering them across the garden. I dutifully piled them back up again. It was part of the fun (and exercise - I wonder how many points 25 minutes of leaf raking gets me?).
After a bit, I got some totes out of the garage that we normally use to catch rainwater (we have no gutters at the moment, due to the garage painting) and got the kids to fill them full of leaves. That also worked well for a few minutes, but once I’d emptied them into the compost pile they didn’t want to refill them again. Oh well, at that point, Kevin was just about done with painting, so he took over and I went inside to make Berry’s half-birthday cake and cook dinner.
Laboring over the weekend
My blogging friend, Christa on Vocational Duality, often writes about balancing work life with mothering life. I’ve been fortunate in managing the two somewhat separately most of the time. But not this last week.
When Duncan was a baby and I leapt into the freelance life, I could put him in a playpen next to my desk and get work done. That lasted until he was a year old. Then I started taking him to an at-home daycare a few afternoons a week. Daddy looked after him some mornings, I worked during naptime and those three afternoons when he went to Kayden’s house.
Then Berry came along. Working with 2 kids is next to impossible. One of them always wants something - usually both of them want something, at the same time, in the loudest possible manner.
Because of this, when I went back to work shortly after Berry’s birth (too soon, I now realize, but that’s another story), I found someone (a wonderful someone) to come to our house to look after the kids. This keeps them close, yet I still get to escape to my office in the attic. I’m around, yet not. We eat lunch together, I put them down for naps, then I go back to work until dinner time. Really, it’s ideal.
I get to enjoy the flexibility of working from home, while maintaining working hours. Generally, I refuse to work evenings or weekends. I’m not a machine, after all. However, every so often, there comes a project with a looming deadline, that requires some after-hours work. I had one this past Labor Day weekend.
Oh boy. It would have gone OK if things had been “normal.” But we were all sick. I was sick. The kids were sick. Even Kevin was sick, although he did a fabulous job of not complaining about it.
So there I sat, one sick kid on my lap, the other sitting in a chair next to me or playing with trains on the floor, working away at the dining room table. We must have been a sight. They watched so much TV I think their brains may have melted and dribbled out their ears (at least they’ve been acting like it). But I kept plugging away and we somehow got through the weekend. My project got finished (finally, yesterday) and we will all eventually feel better. I can’t tell you how glad I was to see the sitter on Tuesday morning.
It’s interesting how we all manage to balance our lives one way or another. If I didn’t have a pressing deadline and I didn’t adore the client, I would have packed work away for the weekend and got on with it on Tuesday. Family and health tend to come before work in my balancing act. Time may be money, but time is also life. Somehow it’s important to find the equilibrium between the two.
Argh. Technology
I had a lovely rant about my iTunes software not working on my PC (making my mum think she shouldn’t buy me that iPod stereo dock that I want for Christmas). And my server ate it.
I’m guessing they had some kind of technical issues, because my site and e-mail were down for a while over the weekend. And then my blog post disappeared (they must have gone to a backup which didn’t have the post on it). Of course, that makes me wonder if I lost e-mail, too. But we’ll never know.
Anyway. It appears that my rant was needless. No, iTunes hasn’t magically started working on my computer. But I’ve discovered that it’s not the only program that will read iTunes imported files and connect to my iPod. Real Player does. I was surprised.
First I tried Windows Media Player. I wasn’t happy about it. I’ve never liked WMP. And it didn’t recognize any of the dozens of CDs I’d previously imported through iTunes. So then I launched Real Player and voila! It does everything I need it to.
I still prefer the functionality of iTunes (plus I’m used to it). But overall, I’ll pick the program that actually works and lets me listen to music. 
Before I was feeling stuck that I had an iPod - of which I am rather fond - but no software to sync it with. One of the reasons I spent more $$ for less GB and got an iPod was that I loved iTunes so much, if you can believe that (plus they look really cool). But I’m sticking with the iPod, so go ahead and buy me that speaker dock for it, Mum. 
This lady’s mine
Duncan would like you all to know that I belong completely to him. As you can see in this first photo, he is happily claiming me as his own. However, if he is expected to share me in any way or spend any time without me, he will immediately put on his DJ Peace outfit (second photo) and rap you into submission.
It’s not that extreme. But we do have some separation anxiety going on. Especially at night. He’s been waking up a lot and needing his mummy. And his mummy’s milk machines.
I think part of it is a growth spurt (because he’s obviously not big enough at 8 1/2 months and at least 25 lbs) and part is needing reassurance and cuddles.
He’s still happy to be left with Kevin — and half the time he gets upset when Kevin leaves the room and he’s left with me. He just wants his people around. So we’ve been playing lots of peekaboo (mummy’s gone but she’s always coming back) and I call to him from the kitchen when he’s playing with his blocks in the living room but he can’t see me. He can be a mummy’s boy. Just not an I-need-you-all-the-time-you-can’t-leave-my-sight-or-have-a-life mummy’s boy.
Not that I’ll be able to leave him out of sight for much longer. He hasn’t quite mastered it yet, but he’s learning to crawl! He’s got the creeping thing down, wriggling to reach toys and papers (like my naturalization certificate) that are just out of reach. Finding his way beneath Kevin’s computer chair, pulling on the cord that the monitor plugs into downstair…you know, everything he’s not supposed to be into. My shoes. The cats. The lint on the area rug.
He learned to sit up from lying down the other day. He’d been working at it for a couple of weeks, trying and trying to do it on his own. Well, now he can. Now he also can’t go to sleep on his own anymore because he hasn’t figured out how to lie back down from sitting. Kinda like when he learned to roll onto his tummy, but not back onto his back. He’ll get there eventually. Until then, I guess we’ll rock and nurse to sleep at night, take lots of walks in the stroller and go shopping in the car more often.
All of that said, he is such a sweet and joyful baby. I think he’s really digging it here.
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