An Astronomy Lesson

As we drove home last night from dinner (after I embarrassingly overcooked my roast, I simply couldn't ask the people I love to endure it...even though they would have if given no other options--because they love me), we were explaining to Bryn what to expect when we get home. She--like her mother (or perhaps because of her mother)--loves lists.

"First, we'll drive home. Then, we'll take a bath. And then, we'll pick out and read books. And then, we'll go night-night." Sometimes she'll correct missing steps in the list like putting on PJs or brushing teeth, but it's a pretty standard routine.

Wednesday night had a gorgeous full moon that was fairly low in the sky. Bryn asked where the sun was, and I offered the painfully inaccurate explanation "The sun has gone to sleep." As an educator, I should know better. I just created a neural pathway that will have to be corrected later on simply because it was the first thing I thought of. Nice work, Mom.

Last night, however, was cloudy, so we could not see the moon on our drive home. Bryn started asking again about the moon and sun, but this time she offered a pretty thorough description of what was probably going on in the heavens. I'm paraphrasing considerably, but it went something like this.

"Maybe the daddy and mommy moon are getting ready to wash he. Yes, the daddy moon is giving the baby moon a bath to get ready for night-night, and the mommy moon is reading books, and the sun is at school playing with her friends."

I wish I could remember all the details because it went on for a while and ended up with "Maybe that's it."

Yep, honey... maybe so.

Um, who's John?

Bryn has started using more sophisticated terms for family relationships. Now, all men don't have to be daddys. In fact, she's worked out a pretty good list of the fathers and daughters in our family, thanks to a Paul Simon song.

She has also started talking about husbands. I thought we came to understand that husbands are a smaller universe of men. That is, until a conversation in the car yesterday.

Bryn: "Who's my husband?"
Mom: "You don't have a husband, sweetie. Only grown-ups have husbands or wives."
Bryn: "I have a yittle husband."
Mom: "Oh, you do?"
Bryn [matter of factly]: "Yes. It's John."
Mom: [not knowing a John in her life right now] "Is John in your class at school?"
Bryn: "No."
Mom: "Did you meet John at church?"
Bryn: "No."
Mom: [silently trying to figure out who she might be talking about]
Bryn: "I need to find him. He's my husband."

Beau would like to find him as well.

I love you but...

My beloved daughter has just recently started prefacing many sentences with "I love you, but..." What's funny is that usually the phrase following "but" is pretty consistent with the idea of "I love you" (or at least isn't contradictory) so we have some work to do on the point of using "but." Once she said, "I love you, but I want you to sit by me." "I love you, but I want to read that book."

Last night around 2:30 she realized that I had snuck out of bed after she fell asleep (to sleep in my own bed with my own husband--not, of course, to just be mean), so she started crying and calling for me or dad to come in. Daddy, being dead to the world, wasn't up for it, so I stumbled in, scooted her over, and settled down to go back to sleep. She flipped over to announce, "I love you, but I want you to lay down with me." Yeah, I got that part.

I started wondering where she might have picked up this phrase--because we're nearing "personal catchphrase" status with it. As all children, she listens intently to what we say around and to her. We hear ourselves more often than we'd like sometimes. I'm pretty sure that I must have the habit of saying something like, "I love you, but I'm not pleased with how you are acting right now." or "I love you, but I would rather you not hang on me while we're trying to eat."

If that did come from me, I hope that she always dwells on the first part of the sentence more than whatever the second part says.

Fairy, Fairy Quite Contrary

Today began the birthday party season in our circle of friends. We were invited to a Fairy Tea Party to celebrate Sophie's 3rd. The invitation kindly offered to provide fairy wings for any "wingless fairies," but GG and Papa (having the direct line to the Mouse) hooked Bryn up with a sweet Tinkerbell outfit. She was fairy from head to toe--including a purse to top off the outfit.

It was a fun to watch her play with her fairy friends from school. They danced, played ring-around-the-rosy, were dusted with "fairy dust" (which turns out to not be all that different than body glitter), and ate cute little blocks of sugar made to look like mushrooms and tea cakes. To be fair, the mushrooms were large marshmallows with some sculpted gummie stuff on top to look like petals or something, and each of the cupcakes were tied with a little ribbon....nice touch. The raspberry punch was served in sugar rimmed teacups. The table was beautiful, but of course, the entire thing was a mine field for parents who prefer their daughter not consume refined sugar.

As a result, I suspect Beau didn't have much fun because he was being hyper vigilant about the quantity of sugar on the party table, the safety hazards that lurked in the goodie bags, and Bryn running around a wood floor in fairy flip flops.

Bryn was a lovely guest (apart from crowding the gift opening a little bit). She sang Happy Birthday with conviction, and she even thanked Sophie for inviting her to the party.

Over the coming months we get to celebrate just about one party a month. Thinking I was getting a jump on things when buying Sophie's gift, I bought presents for all of her friends with upcoming birthdays. One point for my foresight. All the gifts are variations on a theme, but I thought the theme was an awesome one so if they were all different it still works. I didn't quite consider that all these kids would be at the same parties and SEE the theme unfold, seemingly uninspired month after month. I'm going to have to scramble or else Bryn's going to end up with a mess of floor puzzles for her birthday. Maybe eBay is still working.

My collections

I'm really trying to reform myself from a "collector of things" to a "user of things". There are several areas of my life where I like the idea of doing something--apparently--more than the doing of it. Well, that's not true. Whenever I do the something, I really enjoy it and think "why don't I do this more often?!" But, I just don't. I'm not sure what it is about me, but I have several examples so I'm growing into the idea that it's just a pattern/habit/character flaw that I'll need to work on or otherwise come to grips with. Perhaps an example would help illustrate the dilemma.

Scrapbooking.

I am probably the best outfitted non-scrapbooker on the planet. When we joined our church, they asked for my hobbies to share as a way of introducing us to everyone. I carefully looked at the line on the form, and honestly struggled with what to put down. There is a rather large and serious scrapbooking contingent at the church so I didn't want to misrepresent myself as one rather than a wannabe. So, I very nearly wrote down: "I like to collect scrapbook supplies." That would have obviously been a joke, but the pastor said, "thanks for wanting to be so honest." OK, if he didn't find it funny one on one ...that wasn't the direction I wanted to go in front of the entire church. So I proceeded with "scrapbooking (knowing in my heart that wasn't very precise), cooking (knowing in my heart that we eat out on a frighteningly regular basis), and being with family (knowing in my heart that would happen without ANY effort on my part because we all live in the same house.)...but alas.

My daughter is nearly 3 years old, and I have carefully organized pictures from her birth through about a year, some less organized pictures of her first year, and some digital photos I haven't even bothered to print out of her second year. All of that has yielded a total of about 8 scrapbook pages. (Nice work, Mom. Way to capture all the memories.) In the spirit of full disclosure, the great majority of those pages were completed when my sister came to visit for a scrapbook weekend in April. We had a blast...I felt great about what I was doing... It's just that I had apparently no ability to keep it up unsupervised.

Another example of this pattern came up just recently...Running.

I decided to start running--which could also be called "collecting things one would need to run." I have some sweet shoes, socks (which my colleagues say are really the key to running), an awesome watch that has interval timers on it, even "wicking" clothing. I've taken out all this gear twice. That doesn't sound too bad until I add on "in a month" to the end of the sentence. I work with lots of runners, and they were very excited that I was tackling this---sending me links to "Couch to 5K", advice on apparel, where to shop for gear as a newbie, how and when to stretch, that we should get a group together to do one of the many races around here, etc. Until they, too, know that I collect things far before I really use them, they began asking me how the running was going. Started off with a bang on July 4, but took a couple days off from work after the holiday so I didn't have to account for anything for a little bit. Naturally, they asked about it when I returned. Um, yeah, I haven't been back out--my shins hurt a little bit. After a couple of weeks with no running, one guy observed, "you know, I'm a big believer in recovery time, but I think you might be milking it a little." Truer words have never been spoken.

Anyway, I ran again this week. It felt great. I reported to the office with pride.

But haven't done it since Tuesday.

So here we go...

So my sister has essentially dared me to start a blog. That's how most of my productive endeavors start out. So here's hoping that works out for me. She's a tremendous writer, so any attempt to be overly clever will fall way short of her vicious wit (aebidabbadoo.blogspot.com). I'm going to stick with the basics until a) I prove that I'm up for the whole blogging regularly thing and b) I figure out how to work what is seeming to be a straightforward "Click here now" kind of interface.

A couple of things to know before we get started....
1) One reason I've put off starting a blog is because I couldn't think of a good name for it. I thought of "My Humble, Yet Usually Accurate, Opinion" as I was falling asleep last night, so thought today was a good day to get started. I love that everyone has a humble opinion and often labels it as such, when what they really mean is "I'm right and you're not, but I'm going to thinly veil that point because in addition to not being right there's a chance you're not bright either."

2) My writing is fairly stream-of-consciousness. I'm not writing for work or school, so I think I deserve the luxury to be unstructured. That is unfortunate for readers, however, so stand by for revisions to that policy. If I'm annoyed when I reread this later, I'll make a greater effort to collect myself and have a clearer point.

Right...I guess having a point next time should be at the top of my to-do list for the blog. Can only tackle one thing at a time. So today's thing was getting started and naming the thing. More to come....