Blog Archives
Did You Hear a Bell Ring?
I guess this is how blogs die a slow, lingering, death and get their angel wings? Through the author’s careless inattention, unmotivation, and allergy to computer time? Well, I guess if so, then you dear readers can thank graduate school for the sorry state of things. Alright, I can only shift just so much of the blame, but honestly, I’ve been out of school for about three weeks now and I can barely, and I mean barely drum up enough forced attention span to sit in front of the computer to pay bills. (Work, is of course outside this artificial barrier, since I’d be out of a job in mere days if I refused my technological leashes at work.) Honestly, I don’t even know how it is possible to both love and hate something so equally. I mean hell, I shouldn’t complain about the amazing opportunity I have to go back to school and learn really interesting things, but holy bejeezus, it saps my will to live some days. Even though I am still pretty shell-shocked from this academic year, I am trying to focus on two important positive things: a) I get the summer off (WOOHOO) and b) ONLY NINE CREDIT HOURS LEFT TO GO! I might just survive this thing afterall.
So yeah I’ll agree, it’s pretty contradictory to be all “yay! 1 year blogaversary / empowerment / discipline / accomplishment / blah blah blah shit” and then just drop off the radar, but see paragraph #1, above. By the last week of the semester, my soul was bleeding out through my fingers every time I had to log onto the course system. I didn’t even bother checking my final grades for several weeks. Sorry, sorry state, people.
So I’ll try to tackle a series of “latest and greatest” posts to get back on track and we’ll see how things go. Not that there is really anything all that interesting to relay, but it’s my party and I’ll blog about it if I want to. So there. Of course the most interesting thing in my life is my little genius child so I think that’s a logical starting point. You’re welcome.
Dr. K. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Weird / Random Things She Throws My Way
Where to start? Well, she is on this side of four, and creeping up on the landmark age of FIVE this November. She is feisty, funny, and strong-willed as ever, precocious-ly talkative (seriously, her verbal functions are off the chart according to her preschool). At her last checkup she measured at the 75th percentile for height and she seems to be continuing in that growth pattern because when shopping for summer clothes, we had to go pretty much with all size 6′s because the 5′s were already too short in most cases. I packed away her size 5 long pants and shirts for fall but I sincerely doubt they’ll fit for long. Oh well, it means she’s healthy, right?
Which is pretty amazing considering that the kid never eats! OK, that’s not strictly true but she is still pretty picky and will go for 2-3 days at a stretch eating practically nothing. She has recently started eating chicken (as long as it is crispy, boneless, and fried to an acceptable shade of golden deliciousness (sigh). At least it is something new that she actually likes, so I am trying to feel encouraged. She is doing better with eating fruit, and willingness to try tastes of new foods, but still pretty much sticks to her usual routine of pasta, cheese, bread, milk, crackers, and yogurt. She has recently decided that fettucine alfredo is pretty much the cat’s meow at italian restaurants, after a yearlong consideration period of the merits of alfredo sauce for dipping her breadsticks in. I guess it passed the test or something because now she’ll eat it on pasta too, on occasion. And the girl absolutely LOVES garlic bread. She’ll even ignore a sprinkling of parsley on garlic bread, whereas you would think it toxic poison on any other lesser foodstuffs.
She has approximately 3,908,214 toys (I’ve counted) but I find it difficult to retire / donate any of them because she plays with EVERYTHING. She is the most creative, imaginative child I’ve ever known when it comes to the variety of toys she integrates into her play. I so look forward to the day she moves off to college so I can reclaim even one floor of our house to be semi-toy-free. Dinosaurs, stuffed animals, and pretend kitchen toys remain key favorites, but she really is an equal opportunity toy-spreader.
Ever since the loss of her beloved sleepytime Pooh bear (more about this in another post), she has taken to sleeping with a whole herd of critters on her bed. She generally has about 10-15 piled on there every night, but only 1 or 2 favorites are worthy enough to cart back and forth between her room and ours when she wakes in the middle of the night. Pretty crazy.
Yeah, she still wakes up every night and drops by for a visit (AKA taking over 2/3 of the bed and methodically trying to kick her father into permanent male sterility). So, she is sleeping somewhat better than a few months ago where we could barely get her to stay down for an hour. Lately she has been doing pretty well in her room until 4 or 5 am, which is pretty reasonable for her. We tossed around ideas such as draconic sleep training, rules and regulations, bribes, etc etc but when she started sleeping a bit better again, we let the notion slide. Mostly because when it comes right down to it, when I have a bad dream, a bad day, or watch something depressing on TV where kids are hurt, there is something so precious and comforting about having the chance to cradle her noggin in the crook of my arm, kiss her forehead in her sleep, and go to sleep to the sound of her peaceful breathing. I just figure that she is growing up fast enough that I don’t need to make a war out of this right now, even though at times it can be maddening…the sweet, good moments outweigh the rest. For now.
Her vision is much improved with just a few months of wearing glasses and she will most likely not have to go through eye patching or surgery. We are relieved and glad that we caught the vision problems in time to prevent further strain. She still looks totally cute as a bug in her glasses, and she takes really diligent care of them. She has been so mature and easygoing about the whole thing; it really swells my motherly pride factor.
We have been letting her grow her hair out longer because she wanted to start wearing it in ponytails. It is longer than shoulder length now and looks super cute when put up in ponytails or clips, but like a wild bushman otherwise. She prefers the wild bushman look about 5 days out of 7. Sigh.
How is it that they leave so many details out of the parenting manual? No one told me that I’d be called upon to make emergency trips to restaurant or store bathrooms to deal with urgent problems such as “really itchy buns!” Really kid, REALLY? Or that three month stretch when she’d randomly get the urge to throw up after eating (we think it was a mild acid reflux problem) which was super! fun! to deal with at restaurants. Usually after purging, she’d then want to go back to the table and order up some dessert. Um?
Preschool ended in early May and the last-day party was a hoot. Still not exactly sure what lies ahead for her schooling future but we’re still working on it. For now, she gets the summer off just like Mom and has been having a pretty good time. We are looking for some supplementary extracurricular activities to keep her busy along with weekly summer gymnastics.
Speaking of gymnastics, holy cow, I had no idea that a spring gymnastics graduation ceremony for 4 and 5 year old kids could be so hysterical / dramatic / entertaining / cute! They did it mock-olympic style and K and K2 got to show off all their mad skillz. Well, K mostly, since K2 was suffering an attack of performance shyness, but she was still cute as all get out. I think we’ll keep signing her up for the next 5 or 6 years just so I can keep going to the graduation ceremonies, hahaha. Yep, am pathetic example of humanity that is extremely easily amused.
She has a big-girl bike now and is learning to master it. She especially likes taking certain stuffed animals for rides and pedaling around in her gymnastics leotard, sparkley flip flops, and wild bushman hair. Hey, why not?
K has been getting into movies with nuanced storylines and more complex characters, and she has an attention span like a steel trap. We saw How to Train Your Dragon and Shrek in theater and she enjoyed both, especially the popcorn. She wants to see Despicable Me, but I’m not sure how appropriate that may be… She is watching less Noggin (AKA Nick Jr) and more Penguins of Madagascar, Fresh Beat Band, and food network shows with Mom and Dad. She is in love with Alton Brown, and rather enjoys Guy Fieri, too.
So, I guess that’s the latest and greatest with Dr. K. Strangelove. Every day seems to be a little mini roller coaster. She is a very intelligent, loving, generous, stubborn, and lovable kid and I think we’ll keep her for a few more years.
Recycled
Well, I hate to recycle old posts, but honestly, there is nothing that sums me up better right now – it’s that special time of year:
I seem to have hit the mythical ‘second to last week of the semester’ wall. My drive has driven off. Procrastination is the only language which I speak. I couldn’t complete the minimal amount of homework I’d assigned myself last night because I “ran out of soda.” Geez, I sound like a freaking undergrad again.
#212
Well, what with being consumed by turning into a graduate-school-academic-writing-zombie MACHINE, a family-wide cold virus of doom, and a FF dental incident involving him turning into the Stay Puft man, I have not had a chance to recognize my 1 year blogaversary (February 23). Sniff.
But, I unexpectedly find myself with a few quiet moments this afternoon, and while I should probably be napping or doing laundry, I decided to take a few moments to reflect on a year of blogging.
As outlined in a prior post, my two primary reasons for starting this adventure were to capture impressions / precious moments of my baby girl’s development, and to foster within myself a bit of discipline. The last couple months of irregularity aside, I am surprised and fairly impressed with myself for my level of success. I mean hey…this is post #212! Yeah, ok so that is not exactly a daily level of interaction by any means, but the point is I’m still doing it (semi) regularly!
What I have learned though, is that the process of blogging, as opposed to private journaling, makes it more enjoyable. To think that others, even just a handful of family and friends, may get a laugh from K’s antics, or get the chance to see through my eyes how remarkable she is makes the whole thing a lot more worthwhile. I also unexpectedly learned a lot more about myself as a parent, while struggling to put words to feelings and subtle thought processes that might not otherwise have ever been systematically explored. I don’t claim to believe it has helped me actually BE a better parent, but I think that I question more assumptions and think issues through more thoroughly when I sit down to write about them, or by virtue of deciding what not to write.
Another pleasant side effect is the validation of the excessively verbose writer. Being succinct is for memos and text messages. I feel constrained professionally if I so much as write an email that is too long, because people don’t have the patience to read lengthy treatises. But here, I don’t give a damn how long my entries run. If people don’t want to read them, so what? At least I get all my thoughts down, within whatever time constraints I am operating under, anyway. Blogging is a sport made just for me! Lots of wordy stamina and no sweat required!
Tied up within the last point is my final revelation….this year of writing has given me a powerful sense of accomplishment. Not that I’ve really accomplished anything, mind you, but it has shown me that I CAN accomplish something drawn out, abstract, and ongoing. I have always said that I could never write a book, and now I know that with the proper motivation and attention to it, I could. I could write anything I set my mind to. That is some mighty fine empowerment right there, people. (I know, I know…you may leap here to point out the lack of proper form, function, and mechanics as evidenced by my haphazard posts, but I purposefully chose to take an avante garde approach to blogging. I treat it as something that is fun and enjoyable and I did not want to associate it with formal writing, so I don’t bother much with little things like spellcheck, proofreading, or compositional concerns. This is a conscious decision on my part.)
So what have we learned here today, kids? Blogging is a great outlet, cheap therapy, and has some positive side effects. By my calculations, that makes it considerably better than pharmaceutical options.
We have also learned that search terms “wildebeest” and “armadillo” are by far the heaviest traffic funnelers. Who woulda thunk it?
The Tipping Point
It seems that I can keep just so many balls in the air at a time, and when another gets tossed my way, I have to kick one of the others out, or risk dropping them all.
What in the hell is she talking about?
Well, I was trying to find some kind of appropriate metaphor to explain that finding those few precious, quiet, extra minutes to jot down a post every day has been totally eluding me. The kiddo brought home a nasty cold a few weeks ago, and shared it with me of course. And naturally, it turned into a miserable bout of bronchitis that lasted for about 2 weeks.
So anyway, I’m finally better, and trying to get caught up on everything. The house is a mess, I have a huge bunch of work projects to try and corral, and homework is of course an ongoing challenge. I actually hate not getting the chance to post regularly…it makes me feel mentally constipated! I have all these thoughts just running around that want to come out, and they get all backed up with no blog outlet! But hopefully things will settle down…at least until she brings home the next bug.
Discipline: Get some!
I’ve been asked a couple times “what’s up with the blogging thing?” by people lately. Not so much as in terms of this blog in particular, but the concept itself. So I figured it was time to write my personal Rationale Post. Not that anyone remotely cares.
1st comment: why is this so mysterious, people? I mean come on, freely available, yet massively connected to humanity, soapbox? No barriers? No pre-requisites, specific skills or qualifications? A platform that openly encourages the expulsion of every random thought that may cross one’s brain? Why WOUDLN’T this be attractive to people? For a much more eloquent and derivitive exploration of the subject, I point you to the book “The World is Flat” by Thomas Friedman.
For me, both growing up and as an adult, I’d never had the discipline to keep a personal journal. Yet there is so much mystical significance and ritualism tied to the act of regularly capturing thoughts and experiences for posterity. I always wanted to be one of those people that (appeared to) effortlessly commit the time and brainpower to actually writing stuff down. Regularly, no less!
Upon becoming a parent, the crazy sleep deprived moments of life seemed to be accelerating at a supernatural speed. Many times, well-intentioned people would say “write down those memories because it goes by so fast and they are all grown up”. Well, to that I figured, damn, there is plenty that I DON’T want to remember, but to be serious, that is not true. Even the hard stuff is all part of the bigger wonderful picture. Not to get all philosophical, but how would we define pleasure in the absence of anything unpleasant? (wow, that was deep–I need to lay off the college crack.)
Anyhoo, a couple years ago I was of a mind to merge technology and my good intentions and start keeping a journal of parental memories, and as such began looking for a private online blogging service where I could go daily and tap out a few sentences. I landed at LiveJournal, as they made it pretty easy to keep your entries/site private, but I hated the interface and it became more hassle than my minimal sense of discipline could handle.
I didn’t lose track of the urge though, to document and capture some of the crazy stuff that happens with K, and how I have come to utterly believe that truth really, REALLY, really is stranger than fiction at times.
So here we are at the “what do you want for dinner” juncture, and after I methodically considered the issue for many months, I came to a few conclusions:
- it would be more interesting to me to try and share the experience with FF (even though he has proven rather reluctant to write much of his own).
- making it a regular public blog venture would provide me the ability to share some experiences and updates easily with other family and friends.
- it’s incredibly cathartic to have the confessional / mental purge of writing stuff down on the subway wall, as it were. It sometimes helps make more sense of things. It helps me remember stuff in more detail. It leaves you feeling a little vulnerable on many levels-sharing thougths that generally don’t get shared (not because they are bad or anything, but because they are pretty random and pointless!)
- and mostly, I wanted to cultivate a sense of order and discipline in this small way because it is something I definitely need to work on. Hell, I don’t have the discipline to regularly water house plants.
- Typing is a hell of a lot faster and easier than writing.
