Trippin'

My sweet oldest child is at camp all week. (!!!) In his honor, I must post about his nemesis -- the red tricycle.

It seems innocuous. Bright and shiny. Fun, perky streamers. A handy compartment in the back for storing treasures. Totally harmless.

Unless it is accompanied by this:

I happen to look with my eyes when I'm walking, but Javi doesn't. Therefore, the sweet trike turns into a maniacal machine determined to break one of his legs.

He tripped over it no less than five times the Sunday he left for camp. Somehow it always managed to be right in his path of movement.

And when it wasn't stationary, it was being steered by a little girl on a mission to wreak havoc on her big brother's nerves by running over his toes, crashing into his calves, hiding his camp supplies in the "trunk."

Think it worked?

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Going with the Flow

Summer time in our neck of the woods means a string of free performances at the local library. I am all about the free. Usually I take Javi, but this year Bella seemed the perfect age to enjoy the shows.

Last week's performance was Flow Circus, a local entertainer whose props include toys from around the world. He did a great job of integrating storytelling, juggling, magic, dance, and humor into his show.

Bella danced and clapped and got really, really angry when she was never called up onto stage. (Apparently she doesn't know she's not the star of everyone's show.) She's talked about nothing but the show since we exited the auditorium.

But that doesn't mean she made it easy on me. She tried to pull her dress over head, got in and out of her seat, yelled "He's not picking me!" at the top of her lungs, kicked at the back of the seats in front of us, and refused to stop touching another audience member's braids. All in all, it was a normal day out with my Meanie Weenie.

Only this time she wound up enjoying the show from someone else's lap (ehem, a someone else we'd never met before).

Only Bella.

***This post is part of Wordful Wednesday***

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Cluck of the Week: Lazy days of summer

Here's Your One Chance Fancy Don't Let Me Down really is a survivor. The predators have multiplied -- but she's holding it down (with the help of delicious seasonal foods, of course).

There's the (damn) hawk that perches on a high tree in the woods behind our house and randomly swoops through our yard hoping to sink its talons into something tasty. That (damn) bird knows good stuff can be found here.

We've also discovered a nightly raccoon visitor. It waddles its way onto our back deck and gobbles up any food Fancy has left behind. Last night it was a few corn cobs and some leftover watermelon mush. Tonight it'll clear away a pile of feed Bella poured out, some soggy grapes, and cucumber peels. Raccoons eat chickens, but Fancy is always safely roosting when the bandit comes to scavenge.

And then there's the cat lady up the street. Seriously. The cat situation is so bad that her direct neighbors banded together and simultaneously called Animal Control. The approximate count is 30+ cats and kittens. Here's the fun part -- they are all half-feral outdoor cats and not a single one has been fixed. The adults wind up down here at least once a day ... but there's a bb gun for that.

Fancy's name does her strength and self-preservation no justice. She just eats and lays eggs and chills. But homegirl does not die. (Yes, I am knocking on wood.)

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On bringing home the bacon

Work is killing me. There, I said it.

There are kids underfoot during the day. Camp start and end times to make. Consulting meetings and networking lunches. Proposals to submit and invoices to fight over. Phone calls from people who tell you they want you to share your knowledge, but don't want to pay you for it. Deadlines and words and rampant commas. People seeing you make money, and then trying to cash in on your ideas.

Work. But not the kind that pays my bills. 

I freelance as a writer and am paid pretty lucratively when it comes down to hours spent meeting those deadlines. But I have a side project that's really taking off. It holds my heart and sucks up my time and energy, but doesn't pay much (or anything until recently).

If I could just get rid of those paying writing jobs, I know I could grow my side project into something spectacular. Or, if I could have full-time childcare, I know I could handle all the work coming my way without regularly working until 2am. Also known as: different variations of the same pipe dream.

And then there's the guilt about how I should just be happy to have a job when so many are struggling -- especially in my town where unemployment is in the double digits. Add more guilt about how I wish the kids were somewhere else during the day ... which ratchets up when I read so many bloggers posting about how glorious the long summer days are with their amazing and smart kiddos.

How do you work-at-home moms juggle security with entrepreneurism, parenting with needing time and space to work, fitting everything into a day? How do you parent the kids and chauffeur them to camp and get the groceries and clean the house and make the dinner and clean up after and nurture a marriage ... and still find the time to be a woman who brings home some tasty bacon?

There has to be a better way...

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On being kind

It's just me and him, circling
and negotiating his wants, my needs
as the many days of summer
stretch out long and too lean.

Today's goal was to wield kindness
like a sword. Spend precious hours
focused on him, only and fiercely,
showing him that he's loved, even
though I won't give into demands.

A hot dog, a cardboard box,
and green spray-can hair dye
gave me more peaceful work time
than an entire afternoon of yelling.

Kindess. Attention. Time. They actually work.
New goal: Keep it up, woman.

***This post is part of Six Word Fridays.***

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My rough and tumble girl

Ballet is for girls who pirouette and chasse like delicate flowers.

My girl is a powerhouse of movement and sound, a tumbling rumbling flurry of action, the wind that whips your hair and makes your eyes water.

In other words, she's most suited to gymnastics.

She had her first recital (ever) last month and insisted she wear her ballet leotard rather than her unitard. She refused to allow us to come near her. She tried to perform each activity without a spotter. She put her hands on her hips and rolled her eyes when anyone tried to exercise their authority over her.

In other words, she carries exactly half of my genetic code. My attitude and her father's daring. My independence and her father's dexterity. And in that almost-too-small leotard? All that tush? That's 100 percent from the mountain. Guess I should've known way back when.

Despite her fiesty, fierce determination to show us all what she's made of, her coaches have asked her to begin training for their challenge team. That means she'll be taking those rolling eyeballs on the road.

Olympics here we come!

Let's hear about your child's first display of arrogance mixed with middling talent. Or, of course, how fabulous he or she is at everything.

***This post is part of Wordful Wednesday and Way Back Whenesday.***

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Fear Is The Best Medicine

My darling son lacks impulse control, which gets him in trouble in more ways than one. For instance, yesterday he decided to steal a 5 Hour Energy drink and use it to take his ADHD medication. Cue a day of horrid behavior and emotional and physical rollercoasters.

Because he couldn't figure out why a kid shouldn't drink 5 Hour Energy, I decided to tell him the combo of drink + meds could cause his heart to EXPLODE at any moment. His ensuing panic and fear that his heart was a ticking time bomb reminded me of the Cherry Tree Syndrome. Ah. Good times. Nothing like instilling a little fear in your kid to replace bad nerves with hearty laughter.

And so, here's an oldie but goodie. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

This is Javi:


Shortly after this photo was taken, Javi decided to steal a handful of fresh cherries out of his mother's snack bowl. He stuffed a couple in his mouth and tried to chew them as quickly as possible so that he could finish the others in his hand before grabbing more. Unfortunately, that furious chewing and swallowing resulted in a serious misstep.

He swallowed a cherry pit.

So began an 18-hour saga of Cherry Tree Syndrome. Javi's mom couldn't resist acting horrified that he ate the pit because -- doesn't he know? -- that pit will sprout in his belly and a cherry tree will grow up, up, up, (same way the food gets down) until the branches erupt from his ears.

Hour 2: Severe and random belly aches.
Hour 15: Feeling the tree as it grows big.
Hour 17: Spotting its leaves just beyond non-lighted sight in his ear drums.

His mom had to break the first layer of bad news. If the branches happen to grow into his brain, Javi will no longer be one of the smartest kids in his class. He'll probably be last on the PBS board and won't be able to remember his times tables for the third grade. He may not be able to swoosh a basketball in the net from 15 feet a way. He most likely will forget how to ride a bike.

Then came the second layer of bad news. He can't simply prune the branches as they come out of his ears. Nope. That's because the branches will push through poor Javi's eardrum and bring part of it out with them. So if he trims the branches, he's likely to also sever his eardrum.

Which will leave him deaf.

Javi then used his brand new (to him) desktop computer, which sits upon his brand new (to him) computer desk, to search for cures for a sprouted-in-the-body cherry tree. He used search terms like, "how to get a cherry tree out of your body," "what happens when you swallow a cherry pit," and "weed killers for cherry trees in your ears."

Unfortunately, Ask.com returned no useful information. Javi used Ask.com because that's what his Internet browser defaulted to. He never asked his mom what other sites might be good for finding a cure to Cherry Tree Syndrome.

Poor Javi. Will he ever find a cure?

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