Sigh

I'm having severe writers block these days. 
I often take my cues from pictures but I haven't had the time to go downstairs to the office where our other computer is and upload the photos from our camera.  The days are just a madhouse of activities and chasing my animals children.  If I tried to accomplish said task Sawyer would be emptying the bookshelves, garbage can, cat food bowls - basically wreaking havoc. Do it while Sawyer naps, you say.  Well, Sierra usually insists on sitting on my lap and trying to do anything with a 4 year old blocking the screen is impossible.  By evening all I want to do is collapse.  Hence, no pictures.

Then when I sit down (usually during breakfast and lunch because it's the only time my kids are occupied and quiet so it often takes me days to get a post written) and try to come up with something witty and interesting to write  sans picture, all that surfaces are whiny, complainy type thoughts and when I go back to what I wrote a few hours later I make a face and determine that it is unpostable.   

I'm having trouble with motivation these days.  I'm getting no results from anything so my enthusiasm is fast waning.  We can't get ahead financially yet the bills continually go up.  My house is in a constant, varying degree of disaster no matter how much I clean and tidy.  Our yard and garage are also in desperate need of attention.  I have been exercising diligently for two months and the results need to start being more noticeable or I"ll just succumb to the ease of being a lazy sloth and live on chocolate and bonbons.  The comments in blog-land have diminished so I feel like I'm writing to myself, which essentially I am I guess but knowing I have readers is nice too!

That is that. 
I'm not depressed or sad or anything. 
I'm just a little frustrated with the demands of my time and the tremendous lack of it and the absence of results where I do put forth energy and effort.

Recap

(*I wrote this yesterday intending to add pictures later in the day.  Never happened. It will though.  Eventually)

I just downed my fourth cup of coffee for the day.  My usual is one-and-a-half.

That about explains how well I'm recuperating from our Island!

It was a really good - albeit whirlwind - three day weekend.  Our adventure began when the alarm shrilled at 3:50 Friday morning and ended when I flopped into bed at 1:15A.M. Monday morning.  I wouldn't say it was fun exactly but we had a mostly enjoyable time.  Chasing Sawyer, who was extremely sleep deprived and

therefore going on delirious energy (you know the kind where you're so tired that if you sit still you'll pass out so you run instead?), was our main activity  Besides that I spend Friday and Saturday on "Flowergirl duty". AKA staying excited and upbeat and portraying this as an extremely special opportunity so that Sierra didn't run away wailing.  (there was a moment...)  We ended up being "Team Flowergirl", a term I came up with where we would do it together so that she would do it.  A candy bribe from Granny sealed the deal and she ended up walking down the aisle by herself.  Phew!

Overall the kids did very well for kids but traveling and being at occasions like this is quite the experience with them. 

My Thoughts After Spending The Day Preparing For a Weekend Trip

* We are headed to a family wedding on Vancouver Island this weekend and trying to pack with two "helpful" kids is aggravating.  Sierra seems to think we should be able to take anything and everything and Sawyer unpacks as fast as I pack!  

At this exact moment I feel in control.  That scares me.

  Don't ask me how I'm feeling Thursday night.

 (we fly out at an unearthly hour Friday morning)

* Sierra is very traumatized at the idea of Bunny and Dolly having to go through the X-ray machine at the airport.  It's a good thing I told her in advance or it would not have been a good scene at 5 A.M. on Friday!

*I'm a wee bit nervous about how my kids will travel on the plane.  Sawyer hates sitting still and Sierra hates loud noises.

*Sierra is to be the flower girl at this wedding.  I did a trial run on her hair today.  After I was done she called the curls"slinky" (I suppose the curls do resemble a Slinky), bawled for ten minutes and yanked on the them because she didn't like it.  

She'll get over it.

I'll bribe her if I have to on Saturday.

 ( Side note: I must have bought good spray because the curls mostly withstood the yanking)

*As excited as I am to be attending this wedding there is regret mixed in as well since we will be missing a different wedding of a good friend.  Seriously, what are the chances of being invited to two weddings occurring on the same day?  And it's a non-long weekend in September.  And we don't even know that many people in the marrying stage of their life.

 *I'm sure we'll all come home exhausted and cranky and the kids will make me pay for a week after but it will be worth it!  I have a great extended family.

Contortion Sleeping

 

Sleeping like a pretzel after a particularly hard (?) morning.

The Mother Bear Surfaces

The hair on my neck is standing up and I'm pacing back and forth growling - one of my cubs has been threatened!

Here's the story:

Yesterday was Sierra's first full afternoon of preschool (last week was just an intro session).  We baked chocolate chip cookies in the morning so she could have a special treat for snack time.  I also hadn't been grocery shopping in awhile so the options were limited otherwise. 

Off she went with her little backpack and lunch bag.

The first thing she says to me when I pick her up, in a slightly dejected voice, was, 

"I have to have a healthy snack."

Pause.

Oh really?
 

"Who are you to say what my child eats?"
I think in my mind as my defenses rise.

Through some discussion I discovered that a teacher made a healthy snack comment to her.  I also recognize that Sierra is only four and it may have been a very innocent comment misconstrued by a four-year old mind. 
But no matter what they are trying to teach the kids why are they even saying that?  How many three/four-year-olds pack their snack entirely on their own for pre-school?  What do they mean by healthy?  Sierra had a homemade cookie and often I cut the sugar and add healthy ingredients such as oatmeal, whole wheat flour and flaxseed in my baking.  That one cookie had less sugar in it than many yogurts.  So what if she has a treat for pre-school?  They don't know how she eats the rest of the time, maybe pre-school is the only time she gets treats.  (not the case but they don't know that)  Besides, most fruit doesn't survive well once cut up and Sierra will not eat veggies for a snack.
I could rant on.
Seriously though, what business is it of theirs what a child eats?

(Yes, I was a little offended to say the least!)

Now I've since heard that more and more schools are going to limited sugar, such as banning any beverage other than water or milk because of issues such as ADHD.  I scoured the school website and read all the letters they've sent me in detail and the only thing mentioned in regards to the content of said snack is that it should be peanut free.

When the first thing Sierra says to me is in reference to her snack I know that it affected her.

So this mama bear phoned the school and confirmed that there was no policy regarding sugary snacks.  The teacher said it was a general comment to the entire class about bringing a healthy snack along with a treat.  I explained that comments like that affect my daughter negatively and that I would appreciate being told personally regarding issues like that. 
Like I said above, most four-year-olds don't pack their snack without parental guidance so why even tell the children?

 
I told Sierra that if she wants to bring a cookie for a snack, or if she wants to bring a fruit or something "healthier" for a snack she sure can as long as Mommy says she may.

Grrrrr!

My Little Eden

 I absolutely love my vegetable garden this year!
I sowed seeds in a plot of soil for the first time in three or so years.  Wouldn't you know it, those seeds actually grew and are flourishing vegetable plants - with vegetables!
 
I grew up helping my mom and dad with their large garden and enjoyed fresh vegetables every fall so gardening was not a foreign concept to me.   Once I finished high school and left home gardening went a little by the wayside.  I went to college, got married, lived in rental suites with crappy yards, and then when we built our first little house we reserved an area for a vegetable garden.  I was quite excited by the possibilities.  

But by the time the yard was garden worthy we sold the place and relocated. 
When we first moved back to this area seven years ago the house we bought had a mature, established yard complete with a garden plot.  So I planted a garden.
I pretty much hated it.

The weeding.
The watering.
The weeding.
Hoeing the impossibly hard dirt.
The weeding.

The only thing that kept my me going was the fact that I love fresh, home- grown vegetables.
We sold that house after a few years, built another one and now, four years later, I once again have a garden worthy yard with a garden.


This time I've enjoyed the entire process:
The weeds have not been hard to control.
Underground sprinklers make watering a cinch.  
The newness of the soil makes it unnecessary to hoe - much.

It looks so pretty as I stare across the yard.  So full, and green, and satisfying!

And we've been enjoying the produce.  Green beans and peas are it so far as the garden was planted late.  Tomatoes will soon be in abundance, then corn, then potatoes, then carrots...
Yum!

Ketchup Boy

Awhile back, while hanging out with a friend at McDonald's and visiting while Sierra played in the "Play Place", Sawyer discovered ketchup.  I ordered a small french fries for the kids and Sierra sat nicely dipping each piece in her little container of ketchup.  Sawyer, who'd learned to enjoy fries early on in his sold-food-eating life, was refusing the fries and whining. Huh?  Eventually I figured out that he wanted to dip his fries in ketchup too!

Since then ketchup has been deemed the best thing ever, no matter what the food is.  This is much to my chagrin as ketchup is not a tidy way to eat!

School Girl!

Sierra started preschool this week.

When I dropped her off she gave me a fierce hug than walked right in without looking back.

I cried on my drive home.

 

 It's not like I haven't left her before.  

It's only two afternoons a week.

But it's in a real school and represents the beginning of the passing from one phase into another.

There's a small knot in the pit of my stomach.

"Stop, time, stop!!!!"

No, wait.

As my mom said, growing up and changing is a good thing with kids because we wouldn't want to be dealing with any particular age or stage forever anyway!