Nothin but Net

This could be convoluted, but maybe not:

As I was posting this comment on Jesse’s blog, I was IM’d by one of my Online Mommies. I haven’t talked with her in quite some time, and I’ve missed her terribly. I asked her how she was, and she told me. Then she quipped,

“I’d ask you how YOU guys are doing, but I’m afraid you’d tell me to go read your blog!!!!!!!!!!”

The irony of the whole mix has me chuckling.

So yes, Jesse, it is an issue in our modern mommy lives!

I have the same sort of group, as you know, and I just refer to them as the Online Mommies. My dh and I have met most of them. Some of them are actually RT friends we sucked into our circle. They’re definitely real to us.

I do share your love / hate for the internet. It’s been a blessing, but even when I want to turn it off for a week, it’s how I pay (get!) my bills, hear from my Dad, get directions etc. It’s like a silent phone for me.

It’s back to that balance thing. You have to have a way to use your mind while you parent the little ones. The net allows that for a lot of us. My blog is away to capture these times that I will so easily forget, but also a way to keep my friends across the country. But it also allows me to complete sentences and share ideas, which even in a women’s circle I am not always allowed to do. No interruptions. No hijacks. No mockery.

While it doesn’t replace that cup of coffee, the internet lets you have the contact during the stretches of time when you just can’t make the time to get away.

If you withold yourself online from your RT friends because you’re “saving up” for RT meetings, then for me anyway, it’s the same as witholding yourself in general. You can’t not answer emails because “oh I might see them later anyway,” when you can’t be sure that you will. I know how I get when I am depressed, and when I struggle with that, I will avoid as many people as I can. I can still type in those times, dispassionately We have to meet each other where we are.

Good topic.

Crusty Land

Whatever the kids picked up at the campground is nasty, and a lot of my Mommy friends got it in their households, too. It presents as a bad cold, but their throats dry and clog in the night, so in the morning they sound like whooping cranes as they wake up. I know it hurts them, but hey are being little troopers.

That’s pretty much what I am doing these days.

Yikes.

Well.

I took no pix. (well one, but it was of purple haired cuteness, nothing else)

But I had good food, and good friends.

And our kids did well on their first camping trip.

Onto the real camping…………

ETA:

On the way there, we took 410 and all it’s glorious views of the mountains. What tripped us out was that D was saying “Hey guys look! Wow! Puty!”

Yikes. Sentences. Gosh he’s cute.

Camping week

We have a tent up in the backyard, largely just for fun, but also because we will be going on an MDC campout this weekend with a vatload of our homies. We thought it would be nice to let the kids adjust to it and see how they liked sleeping outside.

Monday night, I spent the night in the tent with G&N. We read books by lamplight and pretended we were back at the Renny Faire where the knights could protect us and we could smell the faire food. I was impressed by how swiftly the children went to sleep, and how they slept all night. Their mother, however, was more like the princess and the pea large pile of rocks.

Not the loamy, soft earth of my home, my backyard. It was like sleeping on a bumpy board, and the benefit to this experience was that I now know when we go camping for real I will have to have extra blankets support our sleeping bags. P-daddy(who had a where-is-Mommy? snuggler) and I didn’t sleep well that night, and when 5AM Boobie Call came around, I was happy to answer. For the record, I heard D in the tent, in the backyard, through the closed window. So rest assured, when we say he is loud, we do not exagerrate.

Anyway, the big kids had a great time, slept through the night and were so happy with the experience that they went back in last night. Their parents, however, declined to join them. With the kids ensconced asleep in their tent, the baby tucked away in bed, P-daddy and I got down to business in the most appropriate ways parents do when they find themselves alone: we scrubbed an entire load of work clothes that had been spackled by an inkpen hidden into a shirt pocket. Despite arising at 5, I stayed up until 12.30 AM. I had just lain down my head when I heard N wailing from the backyard, through the open bedroom window.

I wandered out there to hear G groggilly soothing him back to sleep. After speaking with an incoherent, sleep-talking daughter for a moment, I went back to bed. At 3AM, P-daddy did the tent rounds, eventually bringing both children inside, while D never really recovered from the movement of the P-Daddy even after he returned to bed. (How will we ever get him out of our bed if he requires bookends to sleep?) So here we are, dawning on day two into the experiment. The parents are even more tired than they were yesterday, and the children are snoozing away quite happily, sleeping late in their own beds.

I am pretty happy with NO ONE sleeping in the tent tonight.

Renny Faire

If you want to find our family next August, this is where we will be:

Washington Renaissance Fantasy Faire

Click the title link for pix far superior to anything I could generate. I took the two larger kids, and left P-Daddy with Thumper at home. It was very unpleasant: hot, arid, noisy and dusty. We brought only water, peaches and some cheese puffs. But I couldn’t get the kids to leave! They were in particular disturbed and fascinated by the fact that grownups dressed up in costumes. They see the adults in their life working working working, and I think they forget we like to play as well.

Next year we are totally camping. Did I mention it is a wee 2 minutes (if that) from our house?

N took this pic, which I think is the best of the day:

Is this the Dude who lives under the bridge? Yes, there was a troll bridge. And a machete-juggling fire eater. And real horses in real joust. Elves and fairies. Pirates. It was a trip. That’s …. it was freaking awesome! Take Robin Hood, Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean and Braveheart, mix it all together and toss it onto 15 acres in the middle of the woods.

The whole theme to it (this is what kicks it for me, and if you know me….) is that this is a shire from the 1600s in SCOTLAND. So lots of kilts as well. People. For a diversion, it just doesn’t get any better than that! There was the big giant Scottish clan gathering last month on the other side of the county, so we had many authentic, drunken Scots wandering about, amidst the fairies and the gypsies.

G learned how her precious Atocha coin was made, as they had a coin stamping booth. They showed the kids the blanks, and then rang the bell before the huge hammer fell. BAM! Out came the newly minted coin. G FREAKED OUT, wanting, craving, having to have one of those coins. (Mind you, she doesn’t scream or rant or whine in these situations, in case you’re picturing the kid from the mall last week. She just pleads with her eyes and tells me these things verbally) I reminded her that she got the last coin and that if we got a coin today, it would be for N. In the 6 year old all must be fair world, that made sense to her.

Hobbit Boy

I had to upload this one. Our child… truly a hobbit.

Speaking of hobbits, I found and uploaded my gardening journal from 2004. If you’re mildly interested, you can go into the archives and see some pix there.

Got my C-family fix!

I only took pix of the toddler cuteness though.

I got to see Nikirj’s new playtoy and she taught me something new to crave when she gave me a bag of kona-coated macadamia nuts. OMG. Those were tasty. They’ve been out of state for quite some time and it’s been rough missing our buds! I was so happy to see them.

In other news,

G GOT PROMOTED TO LEVEL TWO IN SWIMMING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I did not see that coming. I haven’t been expecting proficiency because I have been so focused on her just adjusting. Well, she’s adjusted! She has such a different spirit when it comes to learning to swim now. She actually revels in it, and jumps right in (literally)! She’s been begging to go to the next session when it starts in September, but we’ll have to see. If I channel the money they charge for two kids attending this admittedly fabulous program into taking the whole family to open rec swim, we’d get a lot more swim time for everyone.

It’s just a matter of deciding whether we can competently take it from here.

harbor fairies

This was so very cool. We really had a nice “we live here!?” evening. We spent the morning painting fairy wings and Nick’s new Tunic sash, but G decided to go all Martha Graham and not wear her wings or her shoes.

The kids totally stole and MADE the concert and it was fun for all of us.

Letters from Grandaddy

Unpacking the last memory box tonight, I found two letters from my Grandaddy, written in 1977. He never wrote in script, just in large, crisp, block print lettering. One read,

Dear ~L~,

I hope the tooth fairy comes tonight

Love,

Your Grandaddy

It was a letter from my Grandaddy to me, when I was G’s age and preoccupied with exactly the same things that she is now. My head is spinning and my heart is aching. He never met my children, and I miss him so damned much.

P-Daddy and the rockin’ out day

Something I left out of my big long post about the G-victory hike was that during the last half of it at least, I couldn’t put D down. The D-meister is not a small child for his age. He’s the one who looks skinny but is made out of something dense, like industrial grade rubber. Anyway, he was hot, scared, cranky and tired during the bushwhacking and the easiest thing to do (believe me at that point, it was) was to nurse him while I walked. This put an unbelievable strain on my back, as I had to hold him at waist level, while stepping over brush and fallen trees, crawling through branmbles and dodging spider webs.

Fast forward to a sore Saturday, but an even more strained Sunday evening after working 8 hours on my feet cooking salmon for the masses. By Sunday night my back was crying, I wasn’t moving too fast and I was kind of dreading Monday morning. I would have an extra baby during swimclass while Schnaygirl went to a very important appointment. Problem? Both toddler boys know and love the pool and for the first time for Schnaybaby, wouldn’t be in it. We’d gone just Friday night, so I knew D would be a pain. The thought of restraining two active toddlers on a pool deck while the big ones attended class was not appealing. It was a close second in potential suckdom, though, to waiting out in the entrance to the pool building. The foyer is a 14 x 14 glass box with one long, wooden, slatted bench and a drink machine. It has two exterior doors, two doors into the locker rooms and one leading directly to the pool. NOT A TODDLER FRIENDLY PLACE.

Anyway, last night P-Daddy decided to stay home and he took the kids to swim while I stayed with the energy cousins. By the time he got home, Schnaygirl was back. He said “why don’t you take my car to get an oil change…and then maybe go for coffee? I’ll keep Schnaybaby here.”

oh

my

god

Do you think he had to twist our arms?

It gets better. While we were gone, strolling GH waterfront and sampling tastiness of all sorts, P-Daddy was picking blackberries and making jam. He tired the kids out and even did the dishes. after he fed them all lunch.

He rocks. He really does.