Nearing the End of an Era

This is what I did today. I cleaned out the drawer that I have loathed for 12 years. The sippy cup drawer. And sadly, when I cleaned these out of there and decided to throw them away, I felt grief. I was actually going to miss washing, matching lids (very important!) filling and delivering chocolate milk to my two boys with these. There was a heaviness in my chest as I looked at them all lined up on the counter. I've still got some sippy cups, don't you worry. But the remainders have princesses and Minnie Mouse on them. And they are rarely used. My littlest girl doesn't really care for sippy cups. She wants to be big like all the rest of the people around here. So I put these into a bag, and then, I sat them on the floor of my pantry behind the garbage can. Not in it, behind it. I couldn't bring myself to get rid of these little reminders of my boys being little.

Mind you, I'm way overdue to do this job. Wyatt is 7 1/2. Sam is 5. No one should be using a sippy cup at these ages, I'll admit. But the clean freak inside of me thinks my carpet is better off having used them all these years. I'm just not as good as other moms at keeping food only inside of my kitchen. And, to be honest, I like to remember the times when they first started using sippy cups and we got rid of our ba-ba's. It was such a step into big-kidhood when we threw those bottles away. But I was sad then, too. As a mother, you get a first hand look at all the stages of childhood, and some of those stages seem to drag on forever. When you're up to your elbows in multiple diaper changes, feedings, and nighttime waking, it seems like those days will never end. You sort of lose the forest for the trees sometimes. But those days do end. You move on from Blues Clues to Star Wars, from blocks to Legos, from baby to boy. And when you get sad about your children changing seemingly overnight, just take a picture of the sippy cups, look at it with some pictures of your babies, and have a good cry.

Eight Years Later

This is one of my favorite pictures of all time. It was taken by Thomas E. Franklin of The Record in Bergen County, N.J. I remember the first time I saw it I really needed to see a picture like this. It came after two days of seeing the unthinkable became reality. My eyes teared up and I was proud to be a member of my country. I felt relief, knowing there were people out there who carried on in the face of despair. I felt grim determination to keep on doing whatever good I could wherever I was. And I knew that I would never look at life in the same way again. Thank you, whoever you are. Thank you, Mr. Franklin.

The Hidden Treasure

I was walking around my house the other day looking for my three year old who was entirely too quiet. After looking all over the top floor of my house, I decided to give up and go downstairs. Then something caught my eye. A shape that looked a little familiar was on the ground where my bedspread was. I carefully walked up to it and felt it. It was warm. I peeled back the edge of the blanket and there she was, safely wrapped in Mom's bedspread, oblivious to the fact that she was asleep on the floor. I was overcome with peace looking at this little bundle of person. For a moment I wished I was the one blissfully sleeping the afternoon away. Then I wanted to lay down on the carpet and snuggle with her, because she's so grumpy when she's awake that the only time she's loving and tender it seems is when she's asleep. Then I was glad she was resting, and crept off to do another job or something totally unimportant. I'm so glad I found this hidden treasure. It made me think of all the things or people I just walk right by so many times a day that I don't appreciate. I take for granted the many things that I have right here next to me and continue to wish for better things that don't matter. My materialism is rearing it's ugly head right now. There are so many things I would like to do, so many items I'd like to have, that I get caught up in how many pennies it will take for me to reach my goals of getting stuff. And I walk right by the thing I'm looking for because it's covered in the everyday. Making a point of looking for the hidden treasure is what takes talent. Spending time with little kids who love you even though you have a messy kitchen takes time. Doing what is smart with your money instead of being frivolous and spending it on things you want is difficult. But they are all worth doing and all will bring more happiness than a house full of stuff that doesn't look sweet when it's sleeping.

You know how it is when you're around kids. There's usually something that is their favorite thing to do that they want to do all the time that completely annoys you. Playland at McDonald's. Nickelcade. The mall. My youngest child loves to go see "The Nemo's," which, if you don't speak Maggie, means The Living Planet Aquarium in Sandy. So today I pulled up my big girl panties and decided to muscle through yet another trip to the aquarium. And my children pleasantly surprised me.

For starters, none of them ran away in the crowds of people to hide behind someone else. They stayed right with me. They patiently waited to look at the tanks of fish and seahorses and octopuses and starfish without clotheslining any other children. They were too scared without their bigger brother and sisters to touch the sting rays in the tank, so we didn't even have to wash our hands. They got scared when I tried to poke the piranhas through the glass. And they let me take their pictures and even said "Cheese." This may not seem like a big deal, but to a mom who has usually chased up to five children in public places for eight years, this was a welcome relief.

I believe in field trips. I think there are things you can learn out in the big, bright world that you can't learn at home, internet or no. But I have to admit, field trips take a toll on the parents. There is a lot of preparation to be done before you leave. And 70% of that preparation is mental. The difference in today's trip? Totally spontaneous. We just did it because everyone else was at school. No pressure, no preparation, just going in for fun with plenty of time to wander. I'm going to have to remind myself to do that again sometime.

The Unfinished Product

So, prepare yourself. This is the blog post where Margo acts like a total and complete brat. There. I said it. So we had our house painted a few months ago, and it only cost half a million dollars. Then we had the windows replaced last month, which was about two million dollars. And those were two of the biggest jobs I thought I wanted done to make me finally have a long and torrid love affair with Grace Kelly. However, it has seemed to exacerbate our already shaky relationship. We just aren't jiving. The trim color we picked seemed great at the time, but once the windows were in, they all just seemed to clash with one another. I have thought about this for weeks, and let me tell you how annoying it is to think about something so material and bratty for so long. It's annoying. So today, my nice neighbor Mike took me on a little field trip to look at some of these darling cottages with beautiful paint jobs. And I think I've found the solution.

I'm going to pretend I don't have orange brick on my house and paint the trim a nice tan color. Not cream, that's too light. Not taupe, that's too much the same color as the stucco. A nice, middle of the road tan to balance out the stucco, brick, and window colors. The fact that I'm even having this conversation with myself is enough to make me move to Guatemala to live in a hut with dirt floors to make me appreciate what I do have, which is a house without a leaky roof but with a leaky basement, a house with a kitchen but not a pretty one, and a house with happy people inside but with one discontented mother. I am such a bad paint picker anyway, I have no idea why I thought I could pick paint for a huge, expensive, long-lasting project like this. It's the epitome of Marge Madness.

Happy New Year's!

In case you didn't know, New Year's is really in late August. Everything is new, everyone is motivated, and there's a new schedule to follow. The only thing we don't have is a new calendar. I should just buy one of those 16-month deals so I can really feel the holiday spirit.

Every year, on New Year's Day, I take a picture of my kids on our front step to show how much they've grown and what they wore on the first day. Too bad we don't live in the same house with the same porch that we lived in when I started this tradition. We have an addition to the New Year's participants this year: child #4. Finally big enough to go to the big kid school, finally big enough for a backpack. It's enough to make you want to throw confetti and have a stiff drink.

Letting It Go

So, remember when I said it was the garden's year? Apparently, it was only the garden's three months. This is what I pulled out of my garden, front and back flower beds today. And guess what? This isn't even all of it! There's still more that I was way too lazy to pull out. It's going to be waiting for me, patiently, until I get some more caffeine in my body and a nice back rub. I have really let my yard go.

And why, you may ask, am I sharing this small bit of embarrassment with you? I could have just as easily gone the whole rest of my life and not shared this information with the world wide web. It's because I wanted you to know the truth. The truth is, gardening starts out easy in the spring. The ground is soft from all the melted snow and spring rains. You baby the seeds you've planted, hoping every day for some bit of growth you can chart. It's pure success, I tell you, this gardening in the spring. But then, things change. Day trips are planned. You go out of town for a weekend. The plants are big enough to skip a day of watering, so you let it go for a day. Then there are a string of 100+ degree days and you think, if I have to go outside for one minute longer than I have to my eyelashes will melt off. You get caught up in the rush of school preparations, and you attempt to potty-train the world's most stubborn toddler. The plants patiently wait for you. They are silently calling, "Hey, could you take care of these weeds? They're really cramping my style. You won't have any pumpkins for Halloween if you keep this up."

Then, when you finally get up the gumption to go out and tackle that yard, you say to yourself, "You know, this garbage can wouldn't be so full if I had weeded last month before the weeds grew as tall as my husband." But there were so many good reasons to put it off. The zoo. The dinosaurs. The pool. The McDonald's. It is a classic lesson we see so many times in life, isn't it? We wish we had done the job when it was small, but we lie to ourselves as to why we didn't do it, like we are important diplomats with uber-important schedules that can't possibly be altered. As I was doing manual labor today, I thought that my head hadn't been this clear in a long time. My head is cluttered with big thoughts and creative yarns strewn on its floor like my messy craft room. Doing something that is simple and easy that still requires effort is sometimes the only cure for a foggy brain. And, my own bit of advice? Make sure you do it the day after the garbage man comes, so you have room for all of your lazy excuses to be thrown away. There are some things its okay to just let go.