Two-year-old Speed Paradox

The 5 Stages of Back to School Shopping

Remember last week when I said I was thinking about homeschooling? Well today I bought a lunchbox for school this fall so you can deduce how things shook out on that front.  My daughter asked me for a new lunchbox "like all the other kids have" every week all last school year and I said no because I had bought her the raddest lunch box ever, a Planetbox, to save me time and sanity finding containers in the morning. I love it! I fill up the compartments and close it up and off you go! But APPARENTLY other parents aren't shelling out $70 for environmentally-friendly stainless steel lunchboxes here in suburban Pennsylvania. That must be more of a California thing. And my daughter's weird, character-free lunchbox has labeled her as a Kindergarten lunchtime and school bus loser.

Lunchboxes are dumb. I prefer function over conformity but now I really wish I had just listened to my daughter a year ago instead of learning now of the consequences of owning a weirdo lunchbox. And although I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be able to buy her way into sitting at the cool table this year I caved and bought the princess lunchbox. Because the thought of my daughter sitting lonely on the school bus each afternoon makes me want to ugly cry in the laundry room with a bag of chocolate chips. Complete insanity.

Hillbilly Eye Spy

This is what it looks like when we visit my husband's small town for the Fourth of July weekend and he drives around trying to convince me to move there by playing some sort of hillbilly eye spy while hopped up on steroids for bronchitis. He really did give this enthusiastic speech. I wrote it down in the car because comedy is my coping mechanism:

Monologue of a manic father holding his family hostage driving around in rural Pennsylvania.

He was feeling patriotic. And nostalgic. And PUMPED.

It's not that I don't WANT to move to my husbands small town. It's just that a boat, a couple of ATV's and tractors, and a bald eagle stature aren't on the tippy-top of my pro and con list.

I really want to live in the best place for our family, which might be just right where we are but we've been paying a bit of thought to the idea of homesteading. We'd love some land and some freedom and room to roam. We'd like to raise animals and to give our kids responsibilities and a slow and simple childhood.

This summer has been full of so much hustle bustle that I'm grieving summers gone by of nothing but boredom. I'm already dreading the school year. I LIKE having my kids home with me. The big kids are so helpful and fun. We've really enjoyed being together. I asked my husband last night if it would be selfish to home school just so I can hang out with my kids year round. Is it the best choice for my kids? I don't know. But it would be so fun though. Home school moms right now are dying laughing at my naivete. Ask me again how I feel about this in August.

I don't know where we'll end up living. Raising a lot of kids I'm learning is actually easier when we are together instead of spread out all over town doing various activities. I can't believe I've been entrusted with the care of five people and I still have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. So I am praying a novena for divine deciding intervention. Happy Fourth of July! Hope your corner of 'Merica is beautiful this summer.

Big Dreams

 

Not what I had in mind.

I want to go on vacation!!!! As if there was such a thing. It's more of a family adventure out of my house time. We've been trying to make it work this summer as far as vacation time and frugality goes and we might yet but in the mean time I will be spending my time soothing a fussy teething infant. Even in my dreams, when I could be doing absolutely anything else instead, I will be anxiously checking my baby for thrush, and new teeth, and fevers, and rashes when I could be dreaming myself up a tropical paradise. Get it together brain. Get the memo.

New Couch

We are the worst. Shortly after we were married, after we threw away our free-to-haul-away-couches, we were in the market to buy a real life adult couch at full price from my husband's best and oldest friend. It took us all day and his friend said we were honestly the worst clients he had ever had ever selling anything and he has sold everything. This shopping behavior of ours has translated to everything we've ever bought. Or should say he has ever bought because I like to buy things in like 10 seconds with zero thought.

But big things like cars and houses and men's shoes, anything that involves my husband, take a very long time. He might just be a man who likes to shop. For just one thing. Extremely slowly and carefully with lots of intense thought and comparison and research. Not lots of things like groceries. Because I give him shopping lists that look like this:

One of my relatively organized shopping lists

And he can't read them or find any of the things in the store. Man can buy three things at the grocery store: eggs, milk, and beer in the same time it takes for me to buy aaallll the things. He just takes his time. He's careful. I am not careful. (See disaster of a shopping list.)

So he can spend all day buying a couch. Or not buying one and going home to sit on our existing dirty broken outdated couch and saying, "You know, this couch isn't so bad. The kids are just going to ruin a new one. And I did a great job choosing this couch in the first place, right?" And I say, "Sure honey. Whatever you say." Because there was childcare. And coffee.

Rough Week

 

I was looking forward to summer vacation with the kind of foolhardy optimism that deserves to be punished. I met my acquaintances with an impetuous, "Are you excited for summer!?" that left many people confused and wary.

Instead of the super fun awesome fun time I had idealized we all ended up kinda sick. Then my husband came back from his business trip week and he ended up kinda sick. I slept something like four minutes in four days and my striped Trader Joe's dish towel started looking uncannily like my baby's striped Carter's romper while getting him dressed until I thought:

Whoops. Not a romper. Next I called the doctor's office to make an appointment for my 2 year old. Except they wanted to know when his birthday was and I was all like, "I know it's in October... and then it's a number and then another number like 2000 and something. I don't know. There's just so many of them. Can you help me out?"

She did. Embarrassing. He is fine by the way, child whose birthday is October something, 2000 and something.

But then I slept. And the healthy kids and I got out of the house. And I bought $500 worth of groceries which has made life yummy and convenient. We go outside almost all day everyday and things are so shockingly good. Colors are more saturated and sounds are crystallized to my ear. I feel like I've received a second lease on life in comparison to the zombie I was three days ago.

The kids spend their afternoons and evenings setting up snow cone stands by the road that no one comes to because we live near a cul-de-sac and lying their babies down for naps under the big oak tree. Our June Berry Tree is ripe with berries and life feels so rewarding and joyful that I can't contain my foolhardy summer optimism again. Plus I just discovered Netflix. Yeeees just now. I don't like paying for TV, okay, but now folding socks is like SOOOOOOOOOOO much better.

Postpartum Thyroiditis

 

I drew this a long time ago when I was really mad at my thyroid for being a bipolar inconsiderate jerk and convincing me I had the energy to use running shoes. I feel much better now but you get a post because I worked too long on drawing those sneakers to let an anthropomorphic thyroid gland comic that you most likely don't relate to go to waste. He is giving a thumbs up in the first frame by the way, not the finger. Unless he's more self aware than I know.

You are probably like most people with normal functioning endocrine and immune systems but I'm sure if you've ever been pregnant you can relate to the fact that it does weird things to women for unknown reasons.

But really, I was looking for an excuse to replace my pregnancy swollen feet worn out sneakers anyhow.

Cheers to your health!

Girlfriend, You Are Not Gross

 

You know what's funny and the same about absolutely everybody; we all keep getting older and changing and sometimes having babies and eventually dying and our bodies are buried underground and practically nobody cares what size dress we wore or how toned our abs were. Dust returns to dust. Strange coincidence: same thing is happening here, me getting older and giving birth to five kids and not returning to the size and shape I was when I was in high school. So weird. 

So I'm at a cross roads where one sign says, "Eat Pizza" and the other says, "Look Attractive," and I totally can't pick one because pizza is so good but I know I'm supposed to care about the second thing, right?

Cultural standards of beauty are always changing and different wherever you are. Remember when this look was in? I should have lived then because that's pretty much what I look like right now. Soft and squishy and junky in the trunky.

I know exercising and eating well can make me feel better. It can improve my performance and help me attain my goals and give me more energy. These are things I care about. I want to be strong enough to heave my 2 year old into a car seat. Kid is a tough opponent, seriously. I don't want to let things get so bad that I can't hang in a game of soccer when my kids are in their teenage years or get myself up on a wakeboard when my kids are old enough to safely spot me if and when we go boating. 

It's just hard to care enough to give up Pizza Friday. I'm sure eventually I'll get to a place where I choose the middle road and keep Friday to "a slice of pizza Friday" not, "an entire pizza Friday." Whoops, is that not a thing? I have some bad pregnancy eating habits to break. 

A lot of women are rocking it because they sincerely love to exercise and eat well for reasons that are not image related like health and endorphins and energy; stress versus zen what have you something, something, something, blah blah blah good for you.

But I wish we could stop being so body-conscious just for appearances sake. I'm sincerely looking forward to that last part when my friends and I are just old farts not caring about our appearances. One less silly cultural fight to fight and more time for just being silly.

Subscribe & Save

 

The baby has started eating solids and I could really use some baby food in the house. I’ve been crushing up strawberries and smooshing up scrambled eggs and none of this is working because he just screams and stares at our turkey sandwiches instead so I think the only thing to do is fill him to brim on baby food so we can eat in peace. Except I don’t have any. And in this one moment of time I’ve been so busy for 5 days that I cannot get to the store at all. Soooo Amazon.

Does Amazon have good prices on those ridiculously expensive organic baby food pouches? I really have no idea. But I ordered some. Because of prime two day shipping. By this afternoon he will be a filled to the baby brim on organic peaches and pears.

I’ve been really been trying to save money on our staple everyday items that I used to not mind spending a little more time driving all over town for when I had three babies at home and needed an excuse to get out of the house. My weekly shopping routine included a visit to four to five different stores and now I can usually manage a visit to one or two. And Amazon picks up the slack.

I read something on how bad conventional disposable diapers are for babies. So I tried cloth diapers for a day and a half before I gave up because you have to change those things like every time they pee which is something like hourly, right. If you cloth diaper, I am sincerely impressed. So I came up with using Seventh Generation Diapers. Just as bad for the environment but none of the chlorine bleach and maybe no plastic but probably plastic because I seriously can’t remember and I researched it two years ago. And the only way I can justify the price is by using Amazon Subscribe & Save so I save 15% on them. Which means sometimes I have an abundance of diapers and sometimes I have none because the next month’s shipment hasn’t arrived yet and I have to use my back up pack of cheap ones and I have no idea if any of this is worth it because I have yet to put together an excel spread sheet.

If you think I’ve completely lost it just know that I am THIIIS close to throwing in the towel and buying the cheapest diapers money can buy. Because one kid in diapers is expensive. And two kids in diapers is expensive. And two kids in diapers and one is preschool is expensive. And two kids in diapers, one kid in preschool, and tuition and uniforms for one kid in Catholic school is expensive. And two kids in diapers, one kid in preschool, and tuition and uniforms for two kids in Catholic school is expensive too. My tolerance for spending 25 cents each for paper and plastic my babies poop in and I throw into a landfill five to ten times a day is WANING.

I am trying and TRYING to save money of stuff that doesn’t last very long. I think I can. This is all how I met Amazon Subscribe & Save where I am trying to maintain a minimum of 5 items to save 15% on also Seventh Generation dish soap, Seventh Generation laundry detergent (which I love), Amazon Elements Baby Wipes (also love), the ever necessary prenatal vitamins, the epic fail Annie’s Homegrown Organic Fruit Snacks, and Plum Organic Baby Food. And paper towels. And chocolate. The essentials.

I have to say that Amazon has a pretty brilliant sales platform. Because I just keep on coming back; Amazoning everything from the mundane to the rare and hard to find. The only thing more efficient would be sending an Amazon Prime Air drone directly to my house to take money out of my wallet and throw it directly into the garbage. That’s not a very fair metaphor. Amazon is more efficient the way it is not having to fly drones anywhere and still getting my money. I need all this stuff mostly.

But I’m keeping the metaphor. Because Amazon Prime Air.

Lifewich

 

Loads of kids? Crazy family vacations? Sports? Music? Art? Friends? Family? Holidays? Do they make a sandwich roll big enough for all of that?

I like to bite off more than I can chew. A lot. It might be my naivety or maybe my gluttony but I really want to do ALL THE THINGS. There's just so much good stuff to do! Which adds up to me not really doing much of anything very well. And baring a close resemblance to Jabba the Hut. Or every Pinterest fail ever. Loads of good intentions and poor execution.

I often find myself in those in over-my-head situations where I need some kind stranger to hold the door open so I can push a double stroller through it. I am a person, often, in way over her head. Which is a good place to be if you think about it. It's good for my humility and my awareness that I can't really do anything on my own anyway.

I have to work hard to keep myself organized, prioritized, and on task or I will spend everyday starting a new unattainable project and never finish a single thing. Like rearranging my gallery of pictures in the great room. For the third time.

It's a work and progress. Hopefully third times a charm. Hopefully I can show you the end result if it ever happens, if I put it on this new to do list when it gets here. And this last paragraph is so full of hope; I am hoping my to do list will act like an efficiency personal trainer and bully motivate me to behave myself and pay the bills and fold the laundry already instead of doing something more fun.