Ry's New Digs

After: Minecraft / Lego retreat

We've been working really hard on the room swap the last two weeks! It started with the inspiration for Ry's new room, picking out the colors, and ordering a new bed for him. Then the painting kicked into high gear. We said goodbye to the girls' old room...which was hard, but necessary. We disassembled their cribs and I found new homes for them where they will be well used and loved. Then we kept on painting. I had two friends visit during the past two weeks who lent a hand and great company during those long hours. Others advised on color selection and I'm so happy that I switched the shade of blue since the first was much too bright and pastel.

Before: The girls' room

Before: The girls' room

As always Ry and I had a lot of fun together. I taught him my painting techniques which were learned over many years and honed last year when I repainted the living room. He enjoyed doing measurements, rolling, and inspecting afterward (wearing his headlamp and using a magnifying glass) to find spots we had missed. He and his dad assembled the bed in one night.

Some of the special things we did were making a bookshelf and reading nook inside one of his closets and then freeing up his large bookshelf for lego car storage! That's one of the advantages of not caring about clothes and having a tiny wardrobe. His other closet is filled mostly with bins of legos. He doesn't even need a dresser so we put his socks and underwear into the bin sitting on top of Steve and Enderman's heads!

We still need a few finishing touches like getting a futon for all the friends that want to sleepover. And to summarize my dynamic with my son sometimes, when I recently confused Minecraft as being created by Lego, he looked at me as if I had grown a second head. I guess they are two totally separate things but he loves them both! He's slept in his new room the last two nights and mostly seems to enjoy having a place to get away from the girls so we're just relieved that the swap worked out well and that everyone has embraced the change! And I'm going to give myself a little break before really tackling the girls' room since I'm pretty tired!

An Amazing Collaborator

My son is often my collaborator, co-conspirator, and initiator of a lot of fun ideas. I'm so grateful to have him in my life. There were two fun examples from today. Last week I convinced him to stop by Safeway with me on the way home from school to get some grocery shopping done for a small dinner party I had on Friday night. We saw a rainbow cake mix and he suggested we bake a cake over the weekend. So we did it this morning! We both enjoyed mixing the six colors. The recipe gave VERY specific instructions on the number of drops of each color to add. Then I decided to also try fondant icing which I've been curious about for a long time. All 3 kids got involved in that. It was really fun to see how smoothly it went on the cake. But during our sniffing and tasting process throughout, I kept getting mixed feedback from them on whether it tasted more like clay or more like sugary icing! In the end we decided it was something in the middle. It looked better than it tasted for sure!

Sometime last week I also worked up the courage to suggest to Ry that he switch rooms with his sisters. His current room is quite a bit bigger and it just makes sense for the girls to eventually have the bigger room since they'll still share one. Ry already puts up with quite a lot from the girls everyday so I was worried about how he would take this suggestion. I offered that he could get a loft or bunk bed and we could redecorate his new room however he wanted. He wasn't exactly jumping up and down about the prospect but he was willing to do it. For whatever reason he said he really wanted to take his bookshelf with him. I love his adaptability! And he can make decisions quickly. I think these are the two attributes that make him a great collaborator with me. So since this discussion we've picked out a bunk bed with a futon on the bottom where we can all hang out and read. And we've agreed on the background colors for the walls which I'm almost 99% certain will end up with some sort of Minecraft scene in the foreground. We laid paint chips out at our lunch at Chipotle with friends today, lucked out on a 40% paint sale, and started painting the grass this afternoon. We both love the color. Being geeky we discussed what height would make most sense and prototyped a few different ones with tape before we got the brushes out. He also mentioned that he still liked the train scene I painted in his current room when he was 1 year old (which made me both happy and sad) and we wondered if the girls would opt for keeping it (which I highly doubt).

I am a little sad to be repainting the rooms and in some ways transitioning from their young childhoods. The next step will be getting rid of the cribs. And my son the pragmatist asked, "are you going to give those away or sell them?" He's always helping me think ahead to the next step!

Our Little Tree

Many weeks ago we made this gratitude tree on an afternoon that our dear friend (and girls' godmother C) came over to spend a leisurely Sunday with us. It's easy in our family for other fall traditions to get momentarily eclipsed by Halloween festivities, since we love planning out our costumes and our annual party so much that we spend weeks and weeks doing it. Okay, I confess that this year several of my friends and I got WAY into the costume planning and may have started kicking around some ideas back in August. But since there's really no better season to reflect upon what we're thankful for, this little tree caught my eye one day while shopping at Target.

So among the acorns and the leaves, we have our family on the tree. We also included grandparents, aunts (especially the three that just came from Ohio to spend a long weekend with the kids), godparents, and school friends. The kids enjoyed picking out the pictures with us, especially the picture of my parents from my dad's graduation back in the 60's ("Who's THAT?" they asked.) It was relaxing to assemble the tree. Ry helped with the acorn assembly. And because the tree is a bit flimsy, we're reminded of its presence almost every day when the girls knock it over and then have to put all the people back on it!

I guess I've taken it for granted that along with saying grace before meals and occasional bedtime prayers, the kids will often say what they are thankful for as well. Ry's list last year included "biking", "school", "family", "God" and "yoga"....talk about a non sequitur!

Hooping!

I'm grateful for a lot of things these past few weeks. We had another round of sickness last week, and it was inconvenient, but we got through it. Friends of ours have had far worse sicknesses such as pneumonia and what appears to be the entero virus or something similar.

I did try my hand at taking some pictures on K's old 30D, and it was a lot of fun. In the last two weeks I've taken over 1000 shots of the kids, a birthday party, baseball game, and the school walkathon. I'm learning a LOT such as experimenting with whether to control the aperture versus shutter speed. K is excited for me to try his shoe flash but I'm not sure I'm ready for that yet!

In the midst of everything I'm constantly being entertained by the kids. The girls have hilarious things to say most days, although they are often very loud, talking constantly, trying to talk over each other, and then yelling at each other, which results in me feeling like I may be going deaf some days. Many days I must sound like a drill sargaent, barking out orders on who is allowed to talk next, such as "A stop talking for a minute! C you go first but keep it short so A can have a turn!"

Ry and I have also had some crazy fun together. One day we played basketball at his school playground with a bouncy red ball and it turned into a full court 1-on-1 game. I would say our skill level is comparable, even given my height advantage. Then we decided the other day to pick up some hula hoops. I've always wanted to be able to hula hoop and could never do more than 2-3 rotations. We watched a bunch of youtube videos and practiced a lot. I got a larger one (that's actually weighted for working out) and finally got the hang of it! I got up to 3 minutes of hooping today. I'm sure that I'm quite a sight to behold. But I feel like it could be a great indoor fitness activity we could all do together. Or perhaps I'm just reverting to things that I never really experienced in my childhood!

Stepping Up to the Plate

When I visited the writing group during the summer and mentioned my idea of a book about gratitude, someone suggested that it would be most interesting to hear what was happening in my life the moments before I felt gratitude. For the stories I had already written, it was impossible to remember. Of course I knew that the general situation in our household in our less-than-happy moments is loud chaos, negotiating, whining, and all the others natural characteristics of families with young kids. Obviously gratitude is not my primary emotion 100% of the time, although when I stop to reflect I can list dozens things I am grateful for.

The incident that stands out last week has to do with my son's fall baseball team. We only started playing t-ball last spring, so we're still relatively new to the sport. In the spring K ended up as an assistant coach (to our friend down the street, who was the main coach), and it was a lot of fun. We're on the same fall ball team as both families on our street that we're friends with. Our schedule is practice on Thursday evenings and games on Saturdays. Last week was the third week of the season and I realized the total chaos and disorganization that characterized our team. For game one, I only stopped by for one inning with my dad. You can see the empty dugout behind Ryan in the picture since he was one of the last batters. That was a rare moment of calm. For game two, I went to watch the whole game and then ended up in the dugout when I could sense that K needed help. Then I realized that I was not at all prepared to deal with 14 rowdy 6-8 year olds. They were hanging off the rafters, putting their equipment everywhere except where it was supposed to go, provoking each other, and trying to bribe each other to not be ratted out! I also realized that the team parent (the coach's wife) was not recruiting sufficient help to make it run smoothly, and she spent half of the game sitting in the stands. This crew is older and VERY different than our spring t-ball team. Then last Thursday night, K ran the practice since the coach was out of town. K was informed at that time by the coach's wife that he was once again needed for coaching Saturday's game. And that's when K had to listen to my 30 minute rant about how anyone could run a baseball team with this level of disorganization. I asked, "So what was their plan going to be if you weren't free to coach on Saturday? And who's going to manage the dugout? Not ME, since I'm celebrating my friend's 40th birthday in SF!" And on and on. I felt very justified in my rant but knew deep down that I was also developing a really bad attitude (or battitude, ha ha) about the team. I almost wanted to drop out. I started grilling poor K on what other sports our son could play.

The next day I still hung onto my sense of personal suffering from being subjected to this level of poor baseball team management. It took a few more sessions of trying to gather data points from colleagues about how other kids' sports teams are managed to be ready to let it go. Then I reached a point of realizing that someone, or a few people, needed to step in to help. And, as often the case, it wasn't about me. K and Ry are both enjoying the sport and practicing together. Even though I don't have a lot of time and can't make it to all the games, I can organize things ahead of time to make sure they go smoothly. It literally only took me 15 minutes of my work afternoon (granted this was Friday of performance review week and everyone had suffered extreme brain drain at this point) to send a few text messages and emails to the coach, his wife / team parent, and the whole team. I found two people to run the dugout, started figuring out which kids would be there, drafted a lineup, and shared with a few others to get input. My friends on my street were delighted and probably laughing at me as well. It was actually fun. I heard afterward that the game went really well, and it was also easier since almost half of the team was out for various reasons. Now I'm back to where I was a few weeks ago of just enjoying the sport. Ry has definitely been improving in his hitting, he's enjoying it, and he's getting to know his two friends/neighbors better. And the girls even like running after the balls for him, so that's a bonus!

I have a LONG list of other things that I'm grateful for this week, including my mom's 75th birthday and her good health, dear friends to celebrate with, a spontaneous trip to the farmer's market with the girls and their godmother, and running another 5k that I survived with pretty minimal training (which is also why I missed my goal of running faster than I did pushing the stroller last time, but this is motivating me to train more which is good).

And I think I've identified a new skill that I'd like to learn. This may surprise some of you, especially the ones who knew K when he was a part-time professional photographer, but I want to get some lessons from him and dust off his equipment. It's 7-8 years old but he has some great cameras and lenses sitting around and I realized that I might as well use them since he's unlikely to at this point. Tonight he brought me a stack of his favorite photography books to read (which I should have expected, since he's a teacher), gave me a very useful 20 minute overview (which is more than I learned in the many years he was shooting since honestly I never bothered to ask), and tomorrow he's going to give me a hands on lesson with his 30D and one of his favorite lenses, his 50mm prime. Wish me luck!

An Inflection Point Caused by a Brief Moment of Sanity

So I had a really fun and somewhat contemplative weekend. I got to spend two nights celebrating my dear friend's birthday - accompanied by an amazing dinner at the Madera restaurant at Rosewood and a totally surprise flash mob one afternoon while lounging poolside! Once again K graciously held down the fort, not complaining a single time. In between the birthday celebration events I did come back to home base for a day of baseball and playground time with the kids, including experimentation with our new pitching machine which the girls are getting involved with as they help load up the balls and also toss them back when Ry's done hitting. And I don't think it was too gender stereotypical to call them his ball girls since they loved it and got some great throwing practice in! Today our typical weekend day with our 3 kids included one kid's birthday party to go to (the boys only), some errands to run (the girls only), a fun gardening project (to do, an afternoon run (me only), and then a successful breakfast for dinner meal (inspired by Ry).

There was a point in the middle of the week that I started to feel a very unfamiliar feeling. At first I chose to ignore it, then the next day I felt it again so I mentioned something to K. Then I chatted about it a little with my dear friend (the birthday girl) since she's known me for 15+ years. So at the risk of sounding crazy, here's what it is. I'm starting to feel a little antsy! It's not that I'm bored, since life is very busy and very fulfilling as it is, between the family I cherish, work that I love and am challenged by, and hanging out with all my dear friends. Antsy-ness is different than boredom, although I will not attempt the technical definition of either one.

But I've realized a few things have changed recently. Since I've finished the first pass at my book, I no longer have a big project that I'm working on. The book project filled all the available time I had and some of my mental space the last two years. Other than the few years when I was most busy after having the girls, I've always had something going on ("on the side," I guess you could say). For ~ 5 years up until shortly after I had Ry, I was into the mother of all time-consuming sports -- triathlons. For the 8 years before that, I did a seminary degree at night and on the weekends.

The other dynamic which is contributing to this is that our routine with the kids has gotten ever so slightly more manageable in the last few weeks. Dare I say easier, at the risk of it all changing by tomorrow morning. The kids are arguing less and playing more collaboratively in surprising ways such as drawing together, reading stories to each other, and building things (tinker toy towers or elaborate train tracks). I can make a meal on the weekend without the kids stressing me out or me wanting to yell at them to stop driving me crazy! Amazing, right? I was able to take the girls browsing today at the nursery and come home and plant veggies and create a fairy garden, and it was actually enjoyable. The girls were able to hangout out for two hours at the baseball game yesterday while I chatted with a friend and we all had fun there. My 9-year-old mother's helper easily managed them for an inning while her mom and I went into the dugout to wrangle the crazy group of kids that comprise our fall ball team (and a bit of yelling was required here since they were HANGING off the ceiling rafters and doing all kinds of other things not at all conducive to the game, and I'm not exaggerating).

I'm not saying this to suggest that we have the parenting thing down. It's actually very confusing to me that things feel different than they did a few weeks ago. But it's part of the reason that I'm feeling just a tiny bit antsy and wondering if there's something else I should do in the evenings after the girls go to bed at 8pm. And I'm trying out a different routine with my work which seems to help with my life balance. Instead of logging onto my work right after the girls go to bed and trying to minimize my time online, I'm intentionally not working most nights until around 10pm. I've found that work fills the time and space you give it, and if I wait until later in the evening I can prioritize just the urgent or really important things that need to be addressed before the next day. So in my brief moments of reflection during my run, I came up with a few ideas for productive things I can do with my apparently extra time. We'll see where this goes, if anywhere!

• Putting more time into my running, since I'm just starting to enjoy it again. Unfortunately this doesn't work well with my schedule as we head into fall/winter 
• Seriously start a new sport, instead of just dabbling (like I did with aerial yoga) 
• Volunteer more - I have at least one opportunity where a friend working on a China-based outreach program asked for help last year when I had much less time, and also another area that has been on my mind since last week 
• Something creative - another writing project, finishing the mosaic I started in the summer, or planning the kids' rooms that I plan to change completely in the next 6-12 months. Maybe even a total room swap, but regardless repainting will be involved, so the old murals I did will need to go 

I'm just grateful to have the mental space and a few moments in my day to even think about ideas for other fun things to do. And for a mom of three little ones it feels like a huge blessing and an absolute luxury.