One Year, One Candle

How can this little man be a year already?

Not that he isn't acting like he's a year old, because he definitely is. Just because it feels like a few heart beats and sleepless nights ago that we expanded to a family of five.

At twelve months old, Duck is...

Walking everywhere
Not talking much, but starting to say a few "words:" that, bye, done
Points at everything
Stares very seriously at strangers
Waves good-bye
Starting to sign a little
Intermittently gives up on the whole sleeping thing
Loves reading books, being sung to, going for runs with mom, and snuggles
Dislikes potatoes, sitting in shopping carts, and wearing shoes


Turning one deserves a celebration. I know he won't remember. But we will all remember. Every moment I get to celebrate this beautiful little boy, I'm going to take it.

There was cake and a candle and not a single attempt to blow the candle out.

There were presents and, wow, did that baby ever love pulling tissue paper and presents out of gift bags!

There were balloons and silly music and family dancing and a lot of cleaning up.

Duck is just what this family needed. I watch Bug and Monkey and think how wonderful this little brother has been for them. It's given Bug the chance to be nurturing. It's given Monkey the chance to be the example. It's given Hubster and I a sense of completeness.

Duck is the perfect last baby. He is cuddly and snugly and happy and fun and every reason I so wanted a third baby. He is also full of enough mischief, eating his brothers' school books and throwing shoes in the trash can, that I look at him and think - that's why he's the last!

I'm so grateful for him. This last year has been everything I wanted it to be. I'm glad we got to celebrate it over cake and a candle.

Still Busy, But Still Here

Three times a week, I go running. This hour in the chilly afternoons is rapidly becoming the only time I have to myself. Which isn't even accurate, since I run with Duck in the jogging stroller. But since Duck loves this, and spends the miles cooing to himself and then napping, it is uninterrupted mental time for me.

I use this time to recenter myself. Think about how things are going at home, at work, with my friends, with my family.  I think about weak areas and develop solutions.

I compose blog posts. Things I want to say. Posts about things I've learned while running, things I've learned in 11 years of parenting, about the crazy squirrels in my backyard.

This weekend, as my feet started moving and my mind starting writing, I suddenly realized how few of these mental blog posts were actually making it from my brain to the screen. And by few, I mean none. I couldn't remember the last time I had written, actually written. Not just updated about the fun activities we were doing as a family or how fast Duck was growing, but keyed out a heart felt post.

I had a small anxiety attack.  Was my blog dead?

I hadn't written about my second 5K, I hadn't written about Halloween, I hadn't written about my job, or Hubster's ongoing adventures in dental school.  I hadn't written about anything really. Had I let my blog that I had loved and nurtured for years, had I let it die?

Blogging has rapidly been changing. There are new ways to follow blogs, new ways to read blogs, new ways to stay connected and new ways to comment. I understand none of them. I've seen my traffic and my comments dwindle just as rapidly as my postings (which is to be expected.)  As this blog is not a source of income and purely for my own enjoyment (and hopefully a little for yours), I haven't invested heavily in keeping up with new technologies and new platforms and new formats. This is pretty much the same place it was when I typed out my first awkward post 5 years ago.

When I graduated residency, I thought I would have oodles of time, mountains of time, more time than I knew what to do with. After all, I would be working 4 days a week, taking no call, working no weekends.  I was going to organize my house! Craft! Read! Blog!

Instead, life has a way of filling every moment, seeping into every new minute it can get, like tide waters cresting a river bank. There was no extra time.

All that extra time I thought I would have became filled with meals and homework and running and story time with Duck and laundry and grocery shopping and vacuuming and parent teacher conferences and the generalized attempts at keeping my head above water while trying to enjoy the ride.

Work has kept me busier than I expected. Covering all the things that Hubster used to do so that he can focus on dental school has kept me busier than I expected. Three kids keep me busier than even I could have imagined.

In reality, this is just a long winded way to reassure myself that this blog isn't dead. I may have only posted once or twice a month for the last year, but that doesn't I still don't have things to say. I may not say them as frequently or to as many people. But it was never about that. I wrote for a year before getting my first follower, and at no point during that time was I discouraged because of the lack of an audience. I'm going to continue to write for the same reason I started. To empty my brain. To capture the memories. To tell a story.

To enjoy the ride.

Taste of the Season

Fall is not my favorite season.

I love the changing leaf colors and the golden light as much as the next person. I enjoy playing in leaf piles and going apple picking. I enjoy fall.

But I just can't bring myself to join the throngs of people that clamor about autumn being their favorite season.

The reason fall hasn't won me over is that each day, the temperature drops a little, the days become a little shorter, the dark lasts a little longer. The cicadas no longer sing. Each passing autumn day, no matter how golden, how bright, how colorful, just brings me one day closer to winter.

There is one part about the season that I do love, though.

The food.

I love fall food more than any other food. Everything is apple, and pumpkin, and spice. And soup.  Oh, how I love soup. That is the one shortcoming of my beloved sweltering summer days: you just can't simmer soup all day on the stove in 100 degree weather.

Apple turnovers.

Pear tarts.

Caramel apple cake.

Apple cider marinated grilled chicken.

Pear spiced pancakes.  Pumpkin pancakes.  Apple pancakes. Cinnamon pancakes.

Butternut squash soup.  

My house smells delicious and fall like nearly every day.  I could cook and eat this food all year long.  Well, until the weather changes to summer and I go back to despising having to turn on the oven.

So until my beloved summer returns, I will comfort myself during the rapid approach of winter with warm, spiced, delicious food.

Overachieving Pumpkin Carvers

Sitting around our kitchen table late into the October night, carving our carefully picked pumpkins, Hubster and I started wondering how we got to this point.  How did we become a family of super competitive, overachieving pumpkin carvers?

We think it began with Hubster's brother, about a year after Hubster and I got married. Hubster's brother, Roo, had bought a carving kit and carved a bat or a wolf or something other than a traditional grinning jack-o-lantern.  And Hubster and I, being the naturally competitive people we are, were like, "Challenge accepted."

And we've been doing it every year since.

This year, our porch will be decked in four pumpkins.

We have a more traditional jack-o-lantern from Monkey, drawn and traced and in part cut out by him.

We have Bug's first solo attempt at a shaded pattern (which means he picked out the pattern he thought was the coolest - Harry Potter - and then transferred the pattern onto the pumpkin, instantly became overwhelmed by the detail, and left Hubster to finish it.)

We have my Wicked Witch of the West.

And we have Hubster's Joker.

Witches, and wizards, and villains, oh my. 

There are times, when we are still cutting and shading and putting the final details on the pumpkins in the middle of the night, that we think we might be taking this whole pumpkin carving a little too far. That maybe we should lighten up, carve a couple of triangle eyes and a toothy grin and call it good. But then we light the candle, turn off the lights, and step back. Every time, the result is amazing and we know that next year, we'll be doing again.

(See previous year's pumpkins here: 2005-2006, 2008 (probably my favorite ones), 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012)

11 Months

At 11 months old, Duck now...

Finally sleeps in his own crib, in his own room, instead of the Pack-n-Play in my room
Has branched out in food, eating practically everything
Stands very well
Takes the occasional steps.  But only when he wants to
Has two teeth
Gets into cupboards
Smiles at everyone
Is starting to be able to take off his clothes (much to the dismay of the daycare)
Still only says one word (Mama)
Loves books, snuggles, wrestling with his brothers, and shopping with Mom
Dislikes potatoes, baby gates, getting his face washed,and getting dressed

Keep Marching, My Child

Dear Monkey,

The one thing that has become apparent as you continue on this path to growing up is that you march to the beat of your own drum. You always dance like no one is watching, even though you are perfectly aware that everyone is watching. You are creative and imaginative and not afraid of new things.

The only thing you ask me to buy at the grocery store is a cucumber and you name it Cucumber Justice and then eat the entire thing for a snack.

You spend whole Saturdays dressed as a ninja or a pirate or a cowboy.

You spend months at a time sleeping in a teepee in your bedroom.

You never want to play by the established rules, but rather turn everything from tag to Candy Land to Lego Heroica into your own version with new goals, new rules, new everything.

Sometimes it's hard being different, both for you the child and for me the parent.

I often just want you to do what everyone else is doing.  Why do you insist on wearing socks with your sandals, or goggles to the store, or shirt inside out?  Why won't you wear the clothes I laid out for you instead of making your own outfits?  Why can't we just walk normally down the sidewalk, instead of insisting that I have to go back because I didn't skip three times between each driveway?  When life, as it often does, gets busy and crowded, your different approach to things becomes frustrating, an extra step in an already packed schedule.

But I see how much you need to be appreciated for being different. How much you crave it. And I'm learning to appreciate that we will never play board games how other families play them and you will always be the kid wearing red socks to school and you will always be the one making funny faces in our family pictures.

 And I wouldn't want you to be any other way.

I want you to continue to dance like crazy in the back seat of the van when Owl City comes on.  I want you to continue to try crazy inventions with no preconceived notions of the outcome. I want you to continue to express yourself with no concern for how others view you. I want you to continue to live loud and happy and completely yourself.

As your mother, I will do my best not to let the world or my own adult, world weary views silence that drum beat inside of you. 

And you, my child, keep marching.

Love,
Mom

Run For Fun

When I set a goal to run a 5K earlier this year, it felt insurmountable. I'm not an athlete by any definition.  I've started a large variety of exercise plans over the years and never been able to stick with any.  I've never had a gym membership in my life.  I knew I wasn't in shape and I knew that eventually it was going to catch up with me.

This year, I became determined to change all that. When trying to decide what I would do, I needed something that didn't require expensive equipment, ridiculous amounts of time, or a gym/personal trainer. With my tight budget and tight schedule, flexibility and affordability was essential. So what better than running? Hubster had bought me a jogging stroller early this year, and this meant that Duck could come with me. I could run whenever I had time, with no addition expense or childcare. It seemed perfect.

There was only one problem with my plan.

I hated running.

I had tried running a couple times before and had quit because I just didn't like it.

This time, things were going to be different. I had a goal - a 5K at the end of summer. I convinced my family it would be fun if we ran one all together and they patiently, as they do with most of my ideas, agreed.

I started a Couch-2-5K program and stuck with it.

Slowly, slowly, I made progress. 

I ran by myself.  I ran with music.  I ran without music.  I ran pushing a stroller. I ran with Monkey and Duck. I ran in the dark early mornings and in the dark late evenings.  I ran on muggy afternoons and rainy weekends.

And this last weekend, we ran our first 5K as a family

And it was awesome!

We decided that in order to make it fun for everyone, including 7 year old Monkey, we would do a color festival type run. Color Me Rad in Des Moines fit all our criteria.

Our only goal for this was that we all have fun and we all finish on our own two feet.  Both goals were met. Everyone, even Monkey, who had never really enjoyed our family runs, had a blast.

We started bright shiny white and over the 3.1 mile course, became covered in bright happy colors.

After that race, I had such a sense of accomplishment. I didn't run the entire time, having stop and walk with Monkey several times. But I ran most of it. I went from running a minute at a time to running a 5K.

Somewhere over the last several months, something changed.

I enjoy running. It helps with my stress level, my energy level.  I sleep better.

I haven't lost weight, which I was hoping would happen. But most the time, I don't care.  I feel better about myself. I don't run fast. I know there are people that run marathons and that a little 5K isn't much. But most the time, I don't care. I've made improvements, I'm changing myself for the better.

I've already signed up for another 5K later this month.  And I'm going to keep going after that.

Who would have imagined a future where people run for fun...and that I would be one of them?


This is the start of something awesome.