Field Trip to The Big E!

September 23, 2010
Photobucket


Today, we made the almost-two-hour trek to Western Massachusetts to visit The Big E with friends. The Big E is not just a “fair”, but a fair I attended year after year when I was growing up in that part of the state.


Not much has changed; except for maybe the increase of disgusting fried things (Fried BUTTER!?!?) and the number of people in motorized scooters.


I will never, ever understand the line that snakes back and forth at the “Maine Building” so that people can spend $5 on a baked potato. Don’t they realize you can get a baked potato in one of those neon food carts and skip the line?

But, some things aren’t meant to be understood, like a giant sculpture made of butter:


Photobucket

One of my favorite things about the day was seeing the people demonstrating old-time skills, like using a loom or spindle, or hammering tin into candle holders and decorative objects. And I am humbled at how time-consuming, yet beautiful, hand-made lace is.

The kids loved that they were even pulled into the demonstration. Here is Jilly with the loom:

Photobucket

And Belly with the tin man (Tin Maker?)

Photobucket

He showed them how to make a star ornament that is hanging in my kitchen right now:

Photobucket
It was weird to be back with the kids and to have such different feelings about the place now that I’m older. When I was young, The Big E was all about the food, the rides and hanging out.

Now, the food looked so much more expensive and unhealthy. I had made a “NO RIDES” rule ahead of time. And “hanging out” today mostly meant that one of the kids was too tired to walk anymore and needed to sit down, right there on the ground.

It was different. But it was still fun. Though I still don’t understand the baked potatoes.
Email, RSS Follow
Filed Under: Fairly Odd Me, New England Mamas, Travel 18 Comments

Sticks and stones and scooters

September 20, 2010


I didn’t break a bone until I had moved out of the house.


Once I was on my own, however, I sprained both my ankles, broke a wrist, fractured an ankle, chipped my front tooth, and damaged both my knees so badly I was on crutches for weeks. Not all at once, but over a few short years.

This could be why I give my kids a little more leeway than my own mother did. I’m not sure if there is any proof in this, but I’m hoping if they learn their boundaries and capabilities young, they won’t go through their twenties like I did.

Let’s hope I’m doing the right thing: Because on Labor Day, when Jilly fell off her scooter in our driveway and fractured her wrist, I was contemplating wrapping my kids up in bubble wrap and refusing to let them out of the house. It wasn’t that long ago that D broke his humerus, his elbow and pulled a bookshelf onto himself. And Belly has also fractured her arm when she was a wee thing; I think my kids are starting to push the envelope on injuries.

Photobucket


And now Jilly: See her pretty pink cast? Thankfully she’s taking it in stride and will heal in a few short weeks, whereas my broken wrist took about 3 months when I was 29 years old.

I’m either getting all these mishaps out of the way while they are young or I’m just raising a bunch of hellions who know what the inside of the ER looks like really well.

Email, RSS Follow
Filed Under: Fairly Odd Kids, Fairly Odd Me, Health n Food Talk 11 Comments

Confession: Just because they didn’t "Cry It Out" doesn’t mean they didn’t cry

September 17, 2010
I think I was a little misleading in my last post about Sleep Training, or the lack thereof, in our household. My quip, “I can’t listen to my cat cry without going to see what she needs, never mind my kid” makes it sound like I am Super Mama, leaping out of bed without a single peep to comfort my offspring.

It was not (and is not) easy for me to come to terms with my kids inability to stay in their frakking beds all night long. I felt like a failure when our crib sat empty in the nursery while babies #1 and #2 slept in our bedroom (by #3, we had given up all pretense and donated our crib to my sister).

And I most certainly was not the picture of tranquility as I soothed my children late at night.

Often, I was the exact opposite.

It pissed me off to be woken up again and again and again. I’d curse my sore butt from my position on the floor, by the door, reading until sleep overtook their tired bodies. I’d “shhhhhh SHHHHHHHH!” them angrily when their wails threatened to wake up the rest of the household at 3am.

Does this come with the territory? Either they cry as babies, or they cry when they are older and we’ve drawn that line in the sand.

I have a couple of friends who put mattresses on the floor of their bedroom and do the “family bed” quite literally. But even with our big king-size bed, we could never comfortably do the family bed with more than one child in it. You do the math: If one was in our bed, that meant there was one, usually two, children who were not sleeping with us.

And often they were pissed.

This is a big reason why the girls now share a bedroom: To keep each other company at night. Jilly is my restless one, often screaming out in the middle of the night, and Belly has taken over my role with her “It’s ok, go to sleep” murmurings.

And, it’s another reason why I let D into my bed so easily. Not only is he my last one, but he is also the only one who has his own room. When he asks, “why do I have to sleep alone?”, I have no answer and just tell him to scooch over to let me lie down.

I know in a few years, he will be so, so happy to have his own room. And then the girls will be crying for their own too.
Email, RSS Follow
Filed Under: Fairly Odd Kids, Fairly Odd Me 18 Comments
« Previous Page
Next Page »