Construction 6th Birthday Party

On August 17, Todd left us for a four-week class at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. I've done the single-parent thing before, but never for that long. A week here, two weeks there, sure, but a whole month with no backup? Nope, that was something entirely new.

To be fair, I chickened out and took the kids up to Nashville to see my parents for Labor Day weekend, so really I only had two weekends on my own. But even so, I was completely unprepared prepared for the reality of working full-time while simultaneously parenting two children. By week four, I think we’d finally fallen into a sustainable routine, but that second week nearly killed us all.

Anyway, Todd didn't get home until late on the evening on Micah’s birthday. Earlier in August, I had thought that even with Todd gone, we could manage some sort of birthday party on the 13th. I pretty quickly came to my senses, though, and when the 12th rolled around, we made do by celebrating with the usual birthday party animal tradition, a candle in his morning pancakes, and dinner out with my parents and my sister’s family. Micah’s biggest birthday present was having his dad walk through the door right before bed.

The next weekend was the real party. This year, I decided on a construction theme. Since we already have a million construction vehicles and I work in construction, I figured the decor would be pretty easy to pull off. I wanted to keep things as simple as possible, and keep the cost below what I would have paid to have the party somewhere else.

I ended up purchasing four small construction signs, party favors, some construction tape, and plastic hard hats for the guests. Everything else we either already had, borrowed, or made.

Invitation:

To make the invitation, I downloaded a couple construction icons from FlatIcon, and threw them onto a slope with some text in Photoshop. (P.S. If you ever need vector icons, FlatIcon is definitely the place to go!)

Decorations:

I found several construction signs online and made a few more for the cupcake toppers. Everything else was kept as simple as possible. I set out some toys, threw around a lot of construction tape, and called it a day.

Wrecking Ball:

We dragged Todd's pull-up bar outside and tied a soccer ball to a rope using garbage bags. We scrounged up several boxes the kids could stack up as high as they could reach.

Sandboxes:

A while back, a friend gave me two under-bed Rubbermaid storage boxes that she was going to throw away otherwise.  For a while, they contained Micah's collection of stuffed animals, but I dragged them back out for the party. A few bags of sand plus several small construction machines, and we had an activity that entertained all the guests WELL beyond the end of the party.  Micah, Aerin, and the neighbor kids played in them the rest of the weekend.  I think we finally emptied them out three weeks later.

Obstacle Course:

Todd used some old lumber we had laying around to build a small wall and a balance beam. Using some cones borrowed from work and some warning tape, we laid out a course that took the kids up the ladder into the play structure, across the bridge, down a slide, across the balance beam, around the yard to the wall, then under a tarp. The kids really enjoyed it, especially the wall.

Hammering:

The same friend who provided the Rubbermaid boxes also brought us a couple Styrofoam coolers. I set up a table off to the side where the kids could use one of Micah's toy hammers to hammer golf tees into the Styrofoam.  This game was also a big hit, but I totally forgot to take any pictures of it.

I was really torn this year, trying to decide if we wanted to have a party at home or pay to have one somewhere else. The costs, after food, were not all that different between the two choices.  But one huge advantage to having it at home was that everyone could stay as long as they liked. The party was supposed to end at 5, but the kids were having so much fun that none of us had the heart to pull them away. The last guests departed at 6:30, simply because they finally got hungry enough for dinner. 

Micah really enjoyed his party, and it was actually a lot less stressful to pull together than I would have expected. Happy boy, happy mama.

Rocking Chair Photo 2014

Look at this great big 6-year-old boy.  I think we're going to need a bigger chair.

Such a long way from this:

Three months later...

Wow, so my last post was in May. Okay, so a few things of interest have happened since then, like:

Todd finally got to play hockey with his child, something he's been looking forward to since he found out he was going to be a father.

We started our garden and watched it grow and ended up with a lot of vegetables I don’t have time to cook.

This one turned 3.

We went on our very first beach vacation since having kids.

We celebrated the last day of summer break.

This one started First Grade.

But overall, it’s just been a non-stop hamster wheel of get up, take kids to daycare, go to work, come home, go to bed, rinse, repeat. There haven’t been a lot of interesting anecdotes or funny stories. It’s just life with two working parents and two small kids, and sometimes that results in near-total radio silence. To the friends and family who check in periodically for kid pictures and updates, I'll try to do better!

Last Day of Kindergarten

So the 23rd of May was the LAST DAY of kindergarten (which also happened to be Pajama Day).

It's been a good school year, and Micah has learned so much.  He can sound out words and write his own sentences (the phonetic spelling is always hilarious and adorable). He's happy to have chapter books read to him at night before bed, and right now we're making our way through The Saturdays. He loves math and drawing, and his skills have taken off in both.  He makes clever paper projects, my favorite of which was a little 3D playground for bugs, complete with swing set.

The one complaint Micah had all year was how little play time he got.  He was jealous of his best friend, who stayed behind in Pre-K, because "they get to play ALL DAY," while the kindergarten class had to work.  The end of daily nap time was also a hard adjustment.  But for all that, Micah was happy (if exhausted) most every day.

After talking with his teacher, we've decided to continue on to private first grade, rather than have him repeat kindergarten at the public school.  Next year, he'll be back in the same classroom, with the same teacher, but this time he'll be one of the big kids.  Some of his friends will move on to other schools, some will stay, and there will be a while new crop of kindergarteners.

Micah was very sad to leave his teacher and friends, until I pointed out that most of his friends were enrolled in the same Summer Camp, and his teacher was the one running his camp group.  After that, he was just excited to be done with work. Yay, summer!

The Working Mother's Decorating Guide

You know how it starts.  You walk through the door after a bad day and deposit your purse, your jacket, the kids' jackets, a handful of papers from kindergarten, a couple art projects from preschool, some mail, and four of the fifteen sippy cups from your car on the dining room table.  Three hours later, the kids are finally in bed and at last you have the chance to  rest for the first time since everyone woke up at 5:30 AM.  You look over at the pile of crap on the table, and you think, "yeah, no."

A couple days later, you do laundry.  By the time you get the 10 millionth tiny sock folded and all 180 pairs of toddler underwear tucked away in the kids' drawers, you look at the pile of adult-sized clean clothes on your bed, and you think, "yeah, no."

On the weekend, while sitting at a swim class, maybe you look at Pinterest or a Pottery Barn catalog, and you have all these IDEAS of how you'll finally print off all those family photos and arrange them in an elegant gallery wall, or create that baby book you've been meaning to put together for the last three years, or paint this room that gorgeous color and hang some beautiful drapes and...yeah, no.

And so it goes.  Until one day you blearily look around your house and realize...it's a total fucking nightmare.

Then you have two choices:

1)  You can start cleaning.

2)  You can start laughing.

I love design blogs as much as the next person, but come on.  Those people are either lying or living a completely different life from me. And since I still didn't feel like cleaning, I set out to document our mess in this helpful style guide for working parents:

Sure, I could have used the time I spent taking pictures to, I dunno, START CLEANING MY HOUSE. But this was much more fun.

(You'll notice there are no pictures of our dining room or bedroom here.  That's because there is a limit to how much of my shame I'll put on the internet and those rooms were way WAY over it.)

"Familys are people that you love."

I love you too, kiddo.  More than anything.

Still very busy, here are some more pictures

Lately

Another milestone, sort of

Last Saturday we embarked on the three-day mission to potty-train Aerin using the same method we did for Micah. Since she'd already been staying dry and using the toilet at daycare, we figured it would go pretty smoothly.

It did not.

Day one was great. Day two nearly killed us all (zero successes, ONE MILLION temper tantrums). I went back to work for the afternoon of day three, and then I left town for days four and five, during which Micah got very sick and had to stay home from school. I got back home Wednesday evening just as Aerin crapped her pants for the third time in as many hours. Todd, after two and a half days alone with a sick boy and a ticking pee bomb, greeted me with all the relief of a soldier coming off the front lines and immediately poured himself a drink.

So here we are on day 10. Pee goes in the potty, mostly. We played outside most of the day yesterday without any accidents or unsuccessful emergency runs inside. She still refuses to poop. We have to go up at 10 PM and 4 AM to take her to the bathroom so her sheets stay dry. She stays dry all day at daycare. So...mission sort of accomplished?

I'm leaving town again this Thursday and won't be back until Saturday afternoon. And the daycare just called to tell me Aerin's running a fever.

Good luck, Todd. We're all counting on you.

O Mismas Tee, O Mismas Tee

For the last several years we’ve had a fake tree, a pre-lit one with molded fir branches that look surprisingly real. We bought it because we were tired of paying $80 for something we just going to throw away after a few weeks, not to mention the needles and sap everywhere and the hassle of putting the lights on and remembering to water the damn thing. And even though I missed the smell of a real tree, the fake one was perfect.

Year after year, an easy, beautiful tree….right up until half the bulbs blew on it last year. CRAP. I bought a bunch of replacements in January, but (to absolutely no one’s surprise) I have yet to find the time or motivation to go through and replace literally hundreds of teeny tiny light bulbs. So we have a beautiful, partially-lit tree with great big dark patches all over it.

To further complicate things, we recently got a new cat. A fourth cat. A cat we needed like Michael Jackson needed another dose of propofol. We went to the pet store for some cat litter and this was happening and well....we, uh, accidentally adopted a cat. An 8-month-old kitten, to be precise, with all the energy and climbing ability you’d expect.

Between the light situation and the cat situation, this year we decided to get a real tree and hang only our most durable ornaments. It was a good idea, except that Todd is a total tree snob and only likes fraser firs. So December 13th found me, Todd, the kids, and Grammy all loaded up in Grammy’s truck, headed to Valley Christmas Tree Plantation, a U-cut tree farm northeast of Huntsville. It was cold and wet and muddy, but we figured we’d get out, look at all the trees, have some hot chocolate, and buy one of the pre-cut fraser firs their website said they had. A decent enough plan, except it’d been two full weeks since Thanksgiving and not even a single fir needle was left.

We hemmed and hawed about buying a pine, but in the end, nothing would suit, and we all piled back in the truck to continue our search. Ultimately, we decided to head to a vendor we’d bought from several years ago, who had since moved to a parking lot off of Highway 20 in Madison, on the opposite side of Huntsville.

About this time, the kids started getting hungry. I hadn't expected to be criscrossing the city and hadn't packed snacks, and things were looking pretty grim there for a bit. Fortunately, on our way through Huntsville, we passed two trains heading the same way as us. They were a welcome distraction at the time, but then we realized we could wait by the tracks in downtown Madison to see them again up close. HELL YES. So we raced past the Christmas tree farm, up to the old Depot in Madison, and along came a train only minutes later. Not the one we were expecting, but that was okay.

Well, that was pretty cool. But we’d seen two trains on the drive, and we expected two to show up. We waited. We got bored. We went to see the Christmas trees set up in the park across the tracks. We got colder. We walked back across the tracks. I found a smashed penny. The kids got even more bored.

The kids were hungry and close to frozen, and we still hadn’t heard even the faintest whistle. We decided the train had probably pulled off somewhere in Huntsville, and we all climbed back into the truck.

Aaaaand that’s when we heard the horn. Back out of the carseats, boots crammed back onto feet, coats trampled into the floorboards, we all scrambled to get out of the truck again. The train was moving so fast, I only just managed to tumble out and catch a quick picture before he blew past us, waving at Micah and blowing his horn.

With Micah's mind sufficiently blown, we turned back around and headed to the tree lot. It didn't take us long to find the perfect tree and get it loaded up.

Two hours, five diesel locomotives, and 60 miles later, we finally arrived home with our tree...which promptly shat needles over the entire house.

Replacing two hundred midgety light bulbs suddenly seems like a good use of time.