"How's the campaign going?"
It's the question I get most often. It's also the question I'm never quite sure how to answer.
Good? ... Great! ... Your guess is as good as mine. ... We'll see May 17th!
The truth - I suppose - all depends on what you're measuring.
This weekend we hosted a Winter ONE-derland party in honor of Felix's first birthday. Considering this child was born during a snow, it seemed like an appropriate theme. Well, the weather had other plans and it was 70 and sunny! I could have hosted the dang party outside!
For my 30th birthday, I created a list of 30 things I wanted to do. One was to write a historical fiction short story. This is the story and as Ruby keeps calling to me here lately. I thought I'd share it here.
One of Nicholas's New Year's resolutions was to try freezer meals. He'd prepped meals for the week on and off through 2015 and wanted to see how it would work to prepare an entire month's worth. Then, we could just pull a meal from the deep freeze, throw it in the crockpot, and on a busy day dinner would be waiting for us.
When I first read about Sonnet James on Cup of Jo, I was immediately obsessed. Basically, they had me at "play dress." I LOVE to wear dresses, but I am the mother of three boys and these dresses need to be realistic. No short hems. No flimsy fabric. Something with sleeves!
So, if a company was describing their dresses as play dresses - as in I could wear these dresses and still play with my boys, I was all in.
For Griffin's third birthday, he chose a Play-Doh theme. Considering today is Play-Doh day I thought I would share one of my favorite parties I've ever thrown. PLUS, I want to reminisce about when my baby was three instead of SIX GOING ON 20!
Inspired by the us in russ, I decided to go with a Play-doh Factory theme. The invitees received tubs of Play-Doh informing them the Factory was hiring. (Cutest RSVP response goes to Abigail's mom who sent me an email informing me of Abigail's Play-Doh qualifications!)
On the day of the party, we welcomed the new recruits who received aprons and busboy hats. Each guest then had to stamp their "time card" and take a photo for their employee ID card. (I added their names in Photoshop and intend to send the pics with our thank you notes.)
Then, our new factory employees made their way to the "Production Line" where they made their own magic Play-Doh with Kool-Aid. They each got to pick what color they wanted by choosing a Kool-Aid flavor. We premeasured out the dry ingredients and then had water and oil available for (parent-led) mixing.
Next up, everyone made their way to "Research and Development." Some very generous friends had loaned me a wide assortment of Play-Doh toys. I spread them out along two long tables and let them go at it. Griffin literally sat at the R&D table for an hour straight. He didn't even get up to greet his buddies when they arrived.
I turned my dessert table into the Factory itself. I decided to try cake push pops for the first time since I thought they were reminiscent of Play-Doh tubs. I had fallen in love with rainbow mini-cakes a while back and decided to make rainbow push pops instead. My stepdad made a long holder for the pops that I put in the middle of the table to look like a conveyer belt coming out of a cardboard box I covered with gears. I was SO happy with the result.
The push pops were a huge success, as was the party itself I have to say. As everyone left, they came to "Product Packaging" and I gave them their time card, some animal-shaped cutters, little mini rolling pins, and the Play-Doh recipe.
I don’t spend a lot of time bemoaning the state of the world. I like to take the long view when it comes to history and, as overwhelming as certain global trends can be, I believe that the world is a good place worth bringing children into.
That is not to say I am immune to fear.
I worry about climate change and the growing power of ISIS. Like the rest of the world, I saw those babies’ lifeless bodies on the shores of Turkey and thought, “How could things have gotten this bad? What kind of world are we leaving to our children?”
However, there is an undercurrent I’ve noticed when people discuss the problems plaguing our planet and its people. I’ve noticed it when people talk about the refugee crisis in Europe. I’ve noticed it when people talk about Kim Davis. I’ve noticed it when people talk about the Black Lives Matter movement.
Then, as I listened to an episode of This American Life, it really hit home.
My time off is being extended as I fly to be with one of these women during a difficult time. I thought this was a good time to repost this ode to girlfriends I wrote on Salt + Nectar a few years.
I used to bristle when people would deride women for being overly emotional. "Girls are so much drama!" they would say. I have friends both men and women who claim to avoid female friendship because the relationships inevitably lead to conflict.
I always thought these ideas reeked of gender stereotypes and sexist assumptions. After all, I think we've all met a moody male or two and Lord knows men have conflicts all their own. If they are more likely to end in a fist fight than tears, well who's to say one is better than the other. (See two can play at this gender stereotype game!)
Well, I'm sad to say I think these people might have been right. Girls are drama.
Recently, I engaged in a little girlfriend drama of my own. One girlfriend simply decided she didn't want to be friends anymore. Another was angry at me for some hurtful things I'd said to her and carried the anger around for months. One friendship was salvageable. One was not. Both situations left me hurt, a little angry, and more than a little gun shy when it comes to my current relationships.
After all, is it worth it? I had spent a lot of time with both these woman. I had shared stories and stresses. I had made them a part of my life and I had made myself vulnerable. In return, I felt like all I got was criticism and rejection.
And if these were my only experiences with female friendship I would say no. Thankfully, they are not. To say I have great girlfriends is sort of like saying I like Oprah - doesn't quite do it justice. Annie, Elizabeth, Laura, Erin, Shannon... These women are my sisters. On the most basic level, I am not me without them. They make me laugh. They make me think. They make me feel better when all I want to feel is sad. My daily prayer is that I give back even half of what they give me.
Have I had drama with these women? Hells yeah. Elizabeth, Erin, and I lived together...in college. Need I say more? We've had our conflicts but the drama didn't consume us. If anything, it made our friendships stronger. And I am so, so happy that I never let a few negative experiences prevent me from opening myself up again.
We all know deep down that all relationships contain drama because they contain people. And people (not just women) are drama. There are so many relationships in our lives that are mandatory - relationships with our spouses, our children, even our coworkers. We HAVE to work through that drama. We don't have a choice. So, maybe it's tempting to cut out relationships that seem optional.
However, I'm here to say. For me, friendship - specifically friendship with other women - is not optional. The phonecalls and gchats and coffee dates with my girlfriends get me through and make me better. I simply could not live without them.
So, bring on the drama. I can handle it - as long as I've got my girls by my side.
I'm taking today and Monday off from posting. We're headed to Kentucky Lake to spend time with family and soak up the last bit of summer.
I hope you have a fantastic weekend!
In the midst of my terrible, terrible time, Amos forgot how to use the potty. People had warned me that regression was a real possibility when a new baby enters the picture. However, when Felix was born in February and we went months without an issue, I just figured Amos was old enough it wouldn’t be a problem.
Then, two things happened. First, we got really lazy about taking his pull-up off in the morning (a mistake we had also made with Griffin because we are clearly slow learners) and he started peeing in them while awake. THEN, we went to the beach where kids spend a lot of time peeing in the ocean (or - let’s be honest - in the pool).
The combination of the two WITH the new baby meant I had a four-year-old pooping in his pants on the REGULAR.
My kids LOVE screen time. If given the choice, they would spend every waking moment playing Minecraft, LEGOS® Star Wars™ app, or watching Netflix until their eyeballs rotted out of their heads.
Obviously, as their mother, I try to prevent this from happening.
Now, I’m not opposed to ALL screen time. We live in a digital age and I want my children to be digitally literate, but I also don’t want their legs to atrophy or backs to develop humps.
I’ve tried and tried and tried several techniques to limit screen time. When Griffin was little, we used a clothespin technique, which worked really well when all we had to deal with was the television.
Since then, we’ve added an iPad, a Kindle Fire HD Kids Edition, and a LeapPad. (In my defense, we won the LeapPad and my husband purchased the Kindle Fire!) So, now I’m not trying to keep them from ONE screen. I’m trying to keep them from FOUR screens.
Several months ago, my dear friend Annie texted me pictures of her neatly organized drawers and told me to stop what I was doing and read Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing.
When Annie says, “Read this book. Do it now.” I do it.
I have been battling with my stuff for a long time. A few years back I announced a massive project in which I was going to declutter and inventory my entire house. Never happened. I tried going room by room and intensely declutter. Never happened.
I would walk around my house and feel like the piles of stuff were mocking me. I would spend weekends purging and organizing but never feeling like I got anywhere.
I was exactly what I didn’t want to be. I was a stuff manager.
The problem was I thought I already knew everything there was to know about organizing. What could Marie Kondo possibly teach me?
Turns out. A LOT.
