Spring Musings

So it's been a few months, but I've thought about jotting down some things numerous times and I just haven't gotten around to it. We're definitely going through a challenging time with the kids where there's a lot more chaos, arguing, and whining than there was six months ago, so some days we're just in survival mode.

But there are always some bright spots and a lot to be grateful for. Two weeks ago when I was just feeling convicted about having a break from technology for part of each weekend, I heard a message at church about it that very day. We tried it one Sunday afternoon and it was great. The girls and I did play doh almost the whole afternoon....which sounds like a VERY long time, but it was really relaxing and almost therapeutic. I just let them do it as long as they wanted. I'm constantly rushing them and it's very hard for me to slow down. Then another weekend we did it again, and one of my closest girlfriends came over and we had a tea party with bubble blowing on the patio.

Baseball this spring has been a really fun time of neighborhood community. I've been trying to keep my very fledgling photography interest/skill alive with shooting a few games. Our entire team is from R's school and games/practice always extend to playdates and meals and sometimes sleepovers. It's especially fun to seeing the boys high-five their classmates when they run into them on the opposing team and to hear their conversations in the dugout. I managed the dugout yesterday and finally got all their names down. Had an awesome time but the hardest part was seeing their disappointment when they struck out and trying to predict how many hitters we would get through and have to take the catching uniform on/off super fast if I predicted wrong!

The kids are more sane when we get outdoors so I'm so thankful for the springlike (and summerlike!) weather that we're getting, especially when we can head to the beach on a Saturday morning! It's nice to even just hang out in our own yard more, planting some tomatoes, basil, and sunflowers, and starting to revive our pool.

Actually the most surprising and fun thing from the last few months is that K and I started a workout routine together. We've been going to Orange Theory Fitness (albeit only once a week together and he sometimes goes a second time himself) but it's been a good workout and challenging. I honestly didn't think he'd go for this at all but he's been going more often than I have. We both like seeing all the heart rate data and how it changes over time and possibly correlates to feeling energetic/okay/tired/sick going into the class.

Last Few Weeks

I'm grateful for MANY things in recent weeks, including:

• A great trip to Ohio to see the family. The kids loved spending time with their cousins and it was a non-stop sleepover for 6 days. All the siblings with kids have more kids than we do, so it was interesting to feel like we had it somewhat "easy" compared to the others who were taking care of babies! The first time flying with all the kids in 2 years also went better than expected. Everyone was super friendly with us on all 4 flights except for the people behind me on the last leg.
• I always remember during this season how much we love our friends as well. It has been great spending some quality time with several of them.
• Every time a relative or friend I haven't talked to in a while asks about my job I'm reminded that I still love it and especially the team I work with, and it's still fun and challenging.
• A lot of us did get sick in the last day or so but will hopefully bounce back quickly! Sleep really does wonders. 
• I went back to aerial yoga this week. Spent a lot of time inverted but it was fun and definitely challenging. The intention I set for the class was to be more present for the kids for the rest of the day. I had an idea later that day that K and I would spend the hour after lunch with the kids in rotating 1:1 time slots (with the 3rd kid doing some reading on their own when they weren't with one of us). We let them pick whatever they wanted and we quickly realized 20 minutes was a bit too short, especially for the things they chose. C chose painting with a new watercolor set, A chose lego building, and R chose to do some science experiments. I was excited that he chose to do the experiments with me and one was a Cartesian diver thing and it was thrilling when it worked!
• I'm constantly feeling humbled as a parent, especially of twins. C announced two days ago that she didn't want her hair anymore (since she wanted it straight, not curly), she didn't want to be herself, and she wanted to be someone else, namely her sister. A little bit of my heart broke for her. I'm still thinking through how to discuss this with her. 
• C also wanted to make a birthday cake for baby Jesus on Christmas so grandma helped her - it was very sweet
• I got to talk to my mother-in-law and her twin sister over the break and hear some of their stories. Some were hilarious, some were not at all surprising, and some made me think a lot about my girls. I would love to work on a project where I gather a lot of twins stories even just among the people I know and help tell their amazing stories.  

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!