It's Official

I now own a fifth grader. Fourth grade promotion day today.

Choosing Joy

To get an extra entry in a contest, I need to post about the contest for my blog readers. Which really seems like a way to lower my chances of winning. But...I don't have that many readers..so click here.

The prize is a $100 Amazon card and a signed copy of Choosing Joy, which sounds like a good read. 

Hey Batter Batter

The 5yo's first t-ball game was tonight. It is the most adorable thing ever. There are no outs, everyone bats every time, and they go for 5 innings or one hour, whichever comes first. It's too cute not to share.

Lexi T-Ball from Melissa Anderson on Vimeo.

Lexi T-ball - Batter up from Melissa Anderson on Vimeo.

Lexi - T-ball - Catcher from Melissa Anderson on Vimeo.

The Loft

So, the oldest has a lot of stuff in her room. She has her bed of course, and dresser and nightstand. She also has a desk and the barbie dream townhouse. It all fits...but not well. We had to turn her bed so it extends into the room so the desk would fit next to it. It doesn't leave a lot of space for playing or entertaining friends. So..after a search, we found plans for a loft bed by OP Loft Beds and the husband got to work last weekend. It was hard work, but so far..totally worth it.

She LOVES the bed. She can't wait to come home every day from school and take her friends up there to play and read and hang out. She loves to sleep in it too. I love all the floorspace she has now and her desk fits well enough underneath I think we won't bother building more than a shelf or two in front of it to hold some desk items. It's pretty awesome. I still need to talk her into purging some stuffed animals, but, let's just take this one step at a time.

Yes, the ceiling fan is a problem. We'll be replacing it with a regular light fixture and working out some other fan solution. She has a small clip on fan up on the bed for sleeping (and for ambient noise) but she'll need more airflow in the summer up there, we'll work it out. We also have plans to find an awesome bean bag chair and add some peace sign stencils to the white woodwork, to girlify it a bit :)

And no, I did not know that OP = orgy proof. Check the "How We Got Our Name" section of their site to learn more about that.

Stop growing

This one is just getting too big. Someone is going to have to ask her to SLOW DOWN PLEASE!

Red Hair and IKEA

Wow I am an awful blogger. I've done a lot of organizing around the house, particularly the desk and office areas and I'm trying to be ambitious and organize the girls' closets and such. But after I take the pictures and what not I'm...tired...and lazy..and I haven't written anything about it. Maybe, one of these days when both girls are in school I'll sit down and write a real post. Anyway...I had my hair colored today, a coppery red. I love it.

Over spring break we went up to the Mall of America in Minneapolis and I cannot leave without going to IKEA. My family hates it, but I am nowhere near one, so I have to go when I can. I have been eyeing a new dining room lamp for about eight years now. Red shade, just simple, but nice. The husband bought it for me while we were there and it looks sooooo awesome. So much better than the standard builders light.

Before

 

 

 

After

 

I love it so very much. Here's a few more :) The room is long, kitchen runs into dining area, runs into "fireplace room" which I guess is a living room. We read in there, the TV is in the other living room.

Before...in the dark apparently

After...still in the dark

Before, from the other direction

After, from the other direction

Ah kids

Says the 5yo. "Two things are different about daddies. They stand up to pee and they don't wipe"

Same 5yo. "One of my boogers is watching Spongebob, the other one is playing webkinz. "

She's hilarious, but super offended if you laugh.

Motherhood: Pick and Choose

I always find it fun to watch new parents. I know I WAS new at one point, but that doesn't make it any less fun to watch them flail and guess. I try not to offer unsolicited advice or to giggle right in front of them as they hilariously try to reason with their infants. It's fun to watch, the learning curve.  But as I thought awhile about motherhood and how it morphs as the kids grow...I realized it's probably still kind of fun to watch me try to parent.

I find there are a lot of things I didn't really know I was signing up for when we made these babies. I wanted cute babies, baby showers, gifts and pampering. It turns out I am not a fan of pregnancy, but I can tolerate it for the gifts and resulting adorable baby.

I did not sign up for children that don't just eat what they're given. I did not sign up to sit at a table with a child that finds out that POT ROAST is for dinner and oh the humanity - cries at the dinner table.

Wouldn't it be nice to pick and choose exactly how motherhood goes? Here is my list. And I'm not interested in comments about how I should be happy with my children, happy I don't have to deal with X or cope with Y. I KNOW. I am extremely blessed with my girls. They are wonderful, obedient (mostly), caring, fun children and I wouldn't trade them. But..if I'm making the list anyway, I might as well shoot high.

The obvious ones...I want them to be
happy (check)
considerate (mostly?)

eats everything
tries everything
brave but smart (perhaps 50/50 here)
smart (check)
beautiful  (check)
excellent sleepers (check)

I don't want...
whiners (oy the whining)
criers (crying on a dime makes me smashy)
afraid of simple things
to give the reproductive/sex talk

I think what I want are cute babies..that morph into super cute toddlers and then into preschoolers and school kids that aren't smarter than me just yet. Then I think I'd like to skip the teenage years because there is so much responsibility with teenagers. For me and for them. Those are the years I have to teach them and try to mold them..without them knowing...into responsible almost adults. It's frightening. I don't ever want to have a birds and bees talk with any child, but I know I'm a few short months from being forced to explain some of the basics to my oldest. I. don't. want. to. She's young, and innocent, and she's anxious and it will set her on edge, I'm sure of it. I want her to have the information and be smart and make good choices (abstinence) but I don't want to have to TELL HER about it :)  (I will of course).

It also turns out I don't want my kids to have friends. No no..I want them to have friends..at school, at church, but not in the neighborhood. I don't want to have to keep an eye on what they're doing or wonder what mine are doing at others' houses. I don't want to have to watch out for the bad seeds that try to take advantage. I don't like it, I'm incredibly uncomfortable with it. I can't control those parts and so I'd rather they just didn't exist. I do not get this wish obviously, my oldest is super friendly and has a lot of friends everywhere she goes - which is probably just payback for this irrational wish of mine. She's a great kid, of course she has friends. 

Oh well. We cannot pick a choose. We couldn't choose our own parents, so our kids cannot choose theirs. We do the best with what we have and what we're given, and with God's help, they turn out to be sane adults. I'm not worried about my children. I will work hard to raise them right with the help of my family and friends, but I sometimes wish I could just pause and remove some of the hard parts.

Paper Hoarder

I am a paper hoarder. Generally I pride myself on not hoarding anything. We regularly purge the toys, and books, and computer paraphernalia. I collect the kids' art throughout the year, and then photograph it all for a photo book and throw it away. Yay for me. As it turns out, I hoard paper. Records, receipts, statements, you name it, if its on paper, I hoard it.

I've been converting us to being as paperless as possible lately. Particularly in our bills and household paperwork areas. The husband bought me a new laserjet printer which is awesome AND a Fuji ScanSnap iX500 which is even more awesome. So I've been bringing up our paper files from the basement file cabinet, up to the desk, sorting and scanning. Deciding to scan and keep only 2 years of past bills (water, gas,electric etc) meant I threw away PILES of paper. We bought a new car yesterday (traded in a less-new angry-making car) and when I was looking for the service papers on it, just in case they wanted it or found it helpful, I came across receipts I had kept for our old cars. Specifically a receipt (tires I think?) from 1999 for my 1988 Plymouth Horizon. As well as a receipt from the husbands 1989? Firebird (also tires I think). Those cars are...like three cars ago for us. Why would I still have these papers? So I am enjoying even more all the sorting and scanning and throwing away (shredding) of all this paper. It's super fun because I like the organizational aspects of it, and because its cleaning without using any real elbow grease.

I have some pictures of the file cabinet and my terrible bill organizer on the desk as well as the piles of paper I'm creating for shredding. I'll post about it again, with pictures, when I get through it all.

Hello. My name is Melissa and I WAS a paper hoarder.

Scandal and Ambition

So before you get too interested. I'm not involved in a scandal...please. I hardly ever leave the house.

I'm fully addicted to the show Scandal on ABC though. I'm seriously considering recording it regularly so I don't have to wait until it shows up on the ABCPlayer on the iPad to watch it while I'm on the treadmill. That's some good TV right there. And then last night I watched Castle (also on the abcplayer on the ipad) and saw Abby from Scandal on Castle. Worlds colliding. Awesomeness. Love both those shows. I love Scandal enough to record it and watch it faster than during my runs..but Castle is perfect for treadmill watching so I'll leave that one there.  #scandal

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I didn't make any resolutions of course, because I hate to set myself up for failures. But I did get back on the treadmill regularly and I'm counting calories. It's paying off, I'm down about four pounds so far. I was a bit too ambitious though.I jumped on the treadmill whole hog and tried running. My knee was not too pleased. So I had to scale it back. Now I'm easing back into it. I am doing the treadmill preset programs - specifically the Weight Loss 400 calorie program. It makes me walk fast, walk uphill, jog a little and I'm not touching it for now. January is my easing-into-it month. February might be also. After that I'll start bumping up the speeds and working on redoing the Couch to 5k program. #ambition

See..scandalous ambition could have been the title too. Just trickery to make you read my mindless drivel. Ha!

I'm just so lazy

Hey. Not me, this isn't about me. This time. We decided to go to Applebees for dinner Sunday night. End the weekend well, eat well, not clean up after ourselves. So I told the girls we're going.

The 10yo exclaims "OH MAN! I wish I'd charged my iPod ! It's dead."

 I say "why don't you charge it right away, when it dies, take it up to your charger, plug it in".

She says "Because I'm just so lazy!"

Ha. There you have it. At least she admits how lazy she is.