Me Too You

Perspective

One day last week I walked into a Vinyasa yoga class and had my world rocked. It was a class that I had heard about for a couple of years now from my hair stylist. She would say "if you EVER get a chance to go to Mark's Wednesday night class, you HAVE to go." It is a little longer than most of the classes - 105 minutes as opposed to 90. 90 minutes somehow doesn't seem so long, even though...it is. But 105 minutes? That is an hour and 45 minutes. Almost 2 whole hours.

But I was ready, so I went.

Here is what rocked my world the second I walked through the door:

All of the yoga mats were turned the other direction.

As in, the mats were not vertically aligned so that you would face the mirror, but were instead lined up horizontal to the mirror, so that we faced the Buddah wall.

Oh. My. God. 

I really don't know why this made such a big difference for me in this class, but it really did. It was not the extra 15 minutes. It was the change in perspective. A simple little thing. Completely changed my view and my practice on that day.

Today, I rocked my husband's and my kids' world. I rearranged all the stuff on my kitchen counters while I was cleaning up this afternoon. I switched the microwave with the toaster and bread basket. I moved the fruit bowl around (to my clutter catching spot- I am hoping to prevent the clutter from accumulating there from now on).

Lily and Ava squealed. Ben came in and switched the paper towel holder with the soap dish and said "Haha!" Jeff shook his head to clear out the cobwebs.

Funny how satisfying a little change in perspective can be.

Giveaway Time: Curious George Holiday Special

While my twin sister, Robin, was here over Thanksgiving, we set up the kids with a movie party (five kids aged six and under - you do the math!), while we moms cooked and baked up a storm. I am not usually one for cooking - frankly, I despise making dinner every single solitary night - BUT I do like cooking when it is social (like for Thanksgiving) and I LOVE baking. I could bake cookies, pies, muffins, breads, whatever all day long. No problem. Fun, fun, fun. I think I go that gene from my Grandma Nita, who we lived next door to (over the river and through the woods) when we were growing up in Seattle.

The movie the kids watched? We had a special pre-release copy of Curious George: A Very Monkey Christmas so we had a little party. This is Curious George's first holiday movie and it is so cute. We are big fans of this curious little monkey - love the science and math teachings and how PBS Kids is able to integrate the experimentation at home ("Go ask your mom for a box of cheerios and a cup of water. Drop cheerios (and nuts and sticks and whatever you can get your hands on) into the water and put the cup in the freezer. Check back tomorrow." Of course, they don't say this outright, but they show a little kid movie after the Curious George show that make the kids go ask their mom this. And see? We learned about liquids and solids and freezing.)

Here's the giveaway: I have 2 copies of the Curious George: A Very Monkey Christmas DVD to give away to two lucky readers. To enter, please leave a comment below, telling me how many days are left until Christmas and what is top on YOUR Christmas list. I will ship to the U.S. only (unless you live in Newfoundland, Canada, in which case I will ship it to my sister with her Christmas gifts and you can pick it up from her!). The winner will be chosen randomly by random.org. Contest ends on Friday, December 11th at 12pm PST. Good luck!

About the movie: In the Curious George holiday special, George and The Man with the Yellow Hat are having a very merry time counting down the days until Christmas. There’s only one puzzle: neither of them can figure out what to give the other for a present. The Man is having trouble reading George’s wish list and George doesn’t have a clue about what to get for The Man who has everything.  Maybe you can help! PBS Kids will be airing the special throughout December, so be sure to check your listings and watch it live too.

Disclosure: I received a box of complimentary goodies from PBS Kids for our Curious George holiday special party, including a pre-release version of the movie, the soundtrack, a Curious George puzzle and book, popcorn and a fun Curious George jiggler game (very fun experiment!). Thanks PBS Kids!

Rude? Me?

I think I may have been having too many mommy meetings lately. For most of Ava's life, she has had her older brother and sister around torment play with. Now that they are away in kindergarten - full day kindergarten, Ava and I are a package deal. She goes with me pretty much everywhere. Although she is in preschool two mornings a week, it is not that much time (especially since we are a parent participation preschool family).

The past two weeks have been crazy for me with work. No, not so much with legal work. In September, when the twins started kindergarten, I decided to take a leave from my law practice for the most part.

I am not currently accepting new clients (I know - sorry! You in line can all just go back home! Kidding...) and have really scaled back on all of my law practice-related work except for a few select clients.

The work I have been busy with has been for a SV Moms Group event that was just held last Sunday. It was fabulously fun to plan and be a part of, but it did involve many phone calls, meetings, hours on the computer, and late nights. It is great to be able to have a job where the people on the other end of the phone call understand that you have kids ("moms" IS in the name SV Moms Group, after all), but at the end of the day it is not really fair to the kids for mommy to have such divided attention.

Let me say that I DID have a nanny and that I DO have the help of my parents quite frequently. But my nanny's husband recently died and it has been tough to...figure out whether she is coming back or not. I appreciate my parents' help, but know they want to be grandparents, not childcare providers (we have done that before and it really is a different relationship).

I think I have finally figured out - after a few weeks of Lily being increasingly tough to separate from at kindergarten and anytime I go out at all, of Ava screaming "stop talking!" at the end of a lunch date/tweetup and when a friend of mine dared to sit in "her" chair at Starbucks today to have some mommy talk, of Ben probably playing way too much Star Wars LEGO on the Wii. It is just not fair - to them - for me to be working so much while they are around. Sure, I have a flexible schedule. Sure, they are old enough (mostly...) to understand that Mommy is on the phone. But they deserve better. More attention. I'll admit it - the screen time has been getting out of hand of late. And I am not proud of that. My precious kids need less TV babysitting and more engaging play time. And I need to work - because I like to engaged professionally too, because I need some "me" time, because my family needs the extra income. No, I am not going back to work full time, but I do need some help.

Of course, I feel guilty no matter what I do. I will miss being The One Who Takes Care of Everyone. It is sort of how being a mother goes. I'm trying to let the guilt go a bit. Trying. But also trying to do the right thing.

So....the bottom line is that I guess I am looking for a new babysitter.

Zooming in the Plasma Car

About six months ago, I had one of those terrible, no-good, very bad days with the kids in Target. We went in for one thing. One. Thing. I can't even remember what it was. But it was trivial. It was under $10 and should have taken 5 minutes. I am very, very used to taking all three of my small kids with me wherever I go, but sometimes they throw me for a loop. On this particular day, there were some bathroom incidents (involving me running each of the three kids to the bathroom for emergencies, near accidents on three separate occasions), there were shoe obsessions (Ava, throwing herself to my feet for 45 10 minutes: "Please, Mommy, please, please, please, please. Can I please have the princess flip flops? I LOVE them....please?!"), and then, there was the Plasma Car. Ava and Lily spied this beauty - two of them actually - and immediately hopped on. These things go FAST. Especially on lovely Target linoleum. I could NOT get them off of them. Once I would catch one, the other one would take off. And it was just one of those "Haha, let's not listen to Mommy" days. I finally dragged them out of the store persuaded them to leave. I was utterly exhausted by the whole ordeal. But, even on that day, we all sort of feel in love with the Plasma Car.

So when, a few weeks ago, a box arrived on my doorstep with a purple Plasma Car in it (for my review, compliments of CSNStores.com's SwingsetsAndMore.com which sells tons of swing sets and all sorts of fun toys), Ava and I were excited. Ben and Lily were at school, so I could assemble it and Ava could try it out in privacy. Well, assembly took me a bit of work. It was mostly easy, but I am not the most handy person and neither is Ava. She has all sort of ideas about how it should all go together, but in the end I did have to make a call to the manufacturer for help. They promptly walked me through the issue (I think that it WAS sent to me in a little funky way, but luckily I did not force the steering column in the wrong way when I started having trouble, but instead immediately called for help - I would have been pretty upset if I had to buy a new part for it, ugh). Assembled, Ava zoomed around the house for, oh, 5 minutes, before we had to leave to pick up Ben and Lily from school. Our house is a bit tinier than Target, so the zoom factor was...well, less. But a little zooming on the kindergarten blacktop did her good. She zoomed and zoomed and zoomed.

The kindergartners and their moms admired the Plasma Car, some of them trying it out as well (not the moms, mostly the kinders). The thing is cute. It zooms. The older kids could get it going in ways that Ava wasn't quite up to, so I think it is something that she'll be able to use and enjoy for quite a while. And it just looks cool.

Full disclosure: CSNStores.com's SwingsetsAndMore.com provided me with the Plasma Car for my review free of charge. Thanks for the zoom!

Ava is a big girl, a big girl, a big girl

Here's how the song goes (Robin and Hannah taught us this):

(Note: The subject of this song - Ava in this case - should be in the middle of a circle, preferably with a large audience surrounding her, singing and clapping)

Ava is a big girl, a big girl, a big girl
Ava is a big girl
She's 2 years old.

(Note: At this point, the subject should begin hopping on one foot in the middle of the aforementioned circle)

Hop, hop Ava
Hop, hop Ava
Hop, hop Ava, she's 2 years old

Today, Ava has indeed become quite a big girl. It began over the weekend - baby steps - and moved into full fledged a Big GIrl Project this morning.

Over the weekend, we decided to do some transitioning of her room - from the baby nursery (with crib, rocker, changing table, closed curtains - to assure napping! - and limited toys) to a "big girl room." Oh, and also we had been using her closet as sort of a stash for all of the random crap (baby stuff to sell, clothes the kids have grown out of, skin care products to send to my sister in Newfounland....) that we have no place for in the rest of our house, living in Silicon Valley in an 1150 square foot house with a garage that we use to work out of. Since we don't use her changing table anymore (she grabs a new princess PullUp from the basket and changes standing up these days), I converted her Stokke changing table into a play table. We removed all the stuff that didn't belong in the room (I piled it into our bedroom and told Jeff he probably shouldn't try to go in there as there was no walking room), and organized the closet. We also moved some toys in from Ben and Lily's room - dress up clothes-orama! Baby bunkbed - the octuplet babies finally have a home (yes, we have 8 baby dolls...at least). But the rocker and crib stayed as is. Ava was estatic. Fun! Toys! Lily made herself right at home too, at one point asking, "Is this my room or Ava's room?"

The bigger change came this morning, when we realized that we really needed to open up her crib into a toddler bed, so that she can get out on her own. See...she has chosen this past week - a week during which our beloved Whirlpool Duet washer of 5 years has decided to break on us...we are waiting patiently for parts - to whisk off her PullUp during her nap and go pee-pee (if we're lucky...) in her bed, thus dirtying all of her bedding (which we cannot wash, being without a washer while we wait for the part to come in and be installed), and ruining her nap. This has happened about 5 times over the past week and we truly think she knows she has to go potty, but is locked in her crib, so can't get out to go. Last night, about 2am, this happened for the first time during nighttime. So we decided, this was it!

Behold...the big girl room, pre and post-crib conversion:

Making the Playhouse a Home

This morning Ben, Lily, Ava and I went to the Summerwinds Nursery and picked out some new flowers and planter boxes to plant around the patio we just put in around their playhouse. The kids picked out the flowers (with my help...although I am quite random myself. Planting in 3s is about the extent of my gardening knowledge), while running around the nursery to check out all the animal statutes - there was a turtle, a bunny, a frog, a cat, and a big dog (Ava said this was her favorite, an overly used concept of hers currently, but this doggy was pretty cool). I would love to get a couple of those stone animals sometime - I used to think they were kind of cheesy, but the kids love them. A lady in our neighborhood has two flanking the gate of her gorgeous front garden and the kids always say hello to them - "Hello, Mr. Turtle! Hello, Mr. Dragonfly!" - as we walk, scooter, bike or run past.

We came home and spent the morning planting. Oh, and I also bought myself a very nice little red watering can. These babies are not hooked up to any sprinklers, so I figured maybe this would be a good way of reminding myself to water them everyday. The kids have little watering cans, so they can help too. We'll see how we do.

As I was planting, I realized that maybe fixing up this little playhouse into a little home for the kids is a little like redecorating for myself. Before we had kids, Jeff and I were always working on the house. Repaint the bathroom in an afternoon, shop for new towels and accessories the next. Voila. Redone. Now, we just don't have that opportunity very much. Our money goes to the kids - clothes, food, childcare, necessities. Our time? Hmmm....also goes to the kids. And now I've spent more money and time on the kids! I'm fixing up THEIR playhouse, instead of taking the time that we haven't for the past 4 years to patch holes, touch up paint on the walls of our living room, fix up the master bathroom (horribly outdated), fix up our front yard, replace our closet doors, etc. etc. etc. Oh well, at least this is a place where I can spend my time too. Sitting in the corner of the playhouse patio, I do feel at home.