My So Called Life

I Survived the Week!

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Last week the kids were on spring break. Coincidentally, Sara was gone to a conference all week, which left me minding the store while she was gone. I was a little nervous about this (a weekend of solo parenting sounds bad enough, but a whole week??), but actually it was totally easy breasy.

I think that 99% of the parenting induced stress in my life comes from having to get the kids to school on time. During spring break, with nowhere in particular to be, all of that come-on-kids-we-have-to-get-out-the-door stuff is just on the back burner. It also probably helps that, with no one to hang out with in the evening, I was pretty well rested (and a special thanks to my extremely early riser, who chose to occupy herself in the morning and let daddy sleep in).

We tried to make spring break something special, including a pajama party with friends (and pancakes for lunch!), a visit to daddy’s work (including a hike), a couple of play dates, a trip to a water park, and an “unplanned” visit to Aunt Rachael’s house.

I wanted the trip to be a surprise, so I didn’t mention it to the kids until it was time to leave. I just dropped it in casually: “Hey guys, you want to do something crazy? Let’s go visit Aunt Rachael!”

Evie was immediately suspicious.

“Did you call Aunt Rachael?”, “Does Mama know about this?”, and “You can’t just show up at someone’s house”. I don’t know how much of it is her personality and how much of it is her knowing *my* personality, but she just absolutely couldn’t believe that we were doing something spontaneous. As we were walking out the door, she said, “What day is it?” and then checked the calendar. “What does I-N-D-Y spell?” she asked.

She would seemingly forget about it for hours at a time, but you better believe she never stopped thinking about it for a second. As soon as we walked in the door: “Did you know we were coming? What does I-N-D-Y spell?” Everybody was playing along, but you simply cannot trick her. Rachael and I were putting away dishes in the kitchen and Rachael said, “When you called last night, I was…” and Evie immediately popped her head into the kitchen. “Daddy called last night, huh? I knew it!” Rachael had some snappy comeback like, “Did I say he called last night?”

While we were there, we had a cold and rainy trip to the zoo that was kind of awesome. We basically had the zoo to ourselves, and the animals were feeling particularly frisky. We had a lion roar at us, seals barking like mad, a walrus spitting fish skin at us (repeatedly), and we reported an umbrella in the cheetah enclosure and got to watch the zookeepers go in and get it with only sticks to protect themselves. We also got to pet some sharks, and even though I knew it had to be safe or else they wouldn’t let you do it, I still felt pretty nervous sticking my hand in there.

Unfortunately, I had a WICKED cold the entire time and felt absolutely miserable. On the other hand, it was much better to be sick at Rachael’s house where someone could occupy the kids then at home where I would have had to deal with them by myself while sick.

Despite all that, I managed to keep the house clean, and the dishes, laundry, and baking current, of which I was unreasonably smug.

So smug, in fact, that I wrote an entire blog post to brag about it.

Ollie and the Water Slide

/ Shane / 2 Comments

We recently bought a Groupon for a night at one of the indoor waterparks in Wisconsin (Timber Ridge). We’ve been meaning to check one of these places out as a sort of reward to Evie for doing so well at swim class, and Timber Ridge was sort of the perfect place for us.

I would say it is definitely geared towards a younger audience, which was just perfect. It was small enough that it wasn’t overwhelming, but big enough that we didn’t get bored. Sara and I would split up with the kids quite a bit, and it was never difficult to find each other. You can go to the water park before you check in and after you check out, so one night was really the most we needed to do. Any more than that and maybe we would have gotten bored with it. The room was perfect too, because it had a separate bedroom (so we didn’t have to go to bed when the kids went to bed) and a kitchen (so we could bring all of our food and not eat out the whole time).

Our kids are just not the kind of kids who like to jump in the water and splash. They are both pretty adverse to getting their faces wet. Thanks to swim class Evie has come a long way, but it’s just time to admit that she’s never going to be a water rat like me. So I kind of figured they’d stay in the kiddie area, maybe just sort of sit around. Like I said, they’re pretty calm in the water, and they especially don’t like to be around people who are splashing. Evie mostly just likes the lazy river. (“It’s so much calmer over here,” she confided with a sigh.)

Almost as soon as we stepped in the door Ollie pointed to the big green slide up near the ceiling and said, “I want to go on that.”

(Hard to see, but it’s the one on the right)

On one hand, I was thrilled. There is nothing I love more than a good waterslide, and it didn’t much seem like the kids were ever going to want to go to Noah’s Ark with me. On the other hand, I was a little nervous for him. This is a pretty big slide. Ollie’s such an easy going, shy little guy; neither of the kids are really risk takers. But he insisted, so up we went.

When we got to the top and I could see the first steep hill, I was saying things like, “Now buddy, remember that this might be a little scary, but everything’s okay and daddy will be with you…” I needn’t have worried. “Let’s do that again!” he said as soon as we got to the bottom.

This boy was relentless. Up and down, as fast as he could climb the stairs. Sara and I alternated with him, and we counted that he went 15 times the first day. That’s over 1,000 stairs! And he would have kept going too, even though he was so tired he could hardly walk.

Evie, on the other hand, wanted nothing to do with the slide. Even Ollie having such a great time couldn’t convince her. Finally, Sara offered enough of a bribe to convince her (“You can stay up until 7:15 tonight!”) and she gave it a go.

She was shaking pretty bad when she got to the top of the slide but, to her credit, she didn’t say anything about it or try to back out at the last minute. And of course, after the first time she had the time of her life and insisted on going down as many times as Ollie after that. By the end she was even putting her hands up the whole time and asking the guy at the top to give us a push so we could go faster.

I only really have one complaint to level at Timber Ridge and that is there weren’t enough kiddie rafts. Some of the rafts had a seat in the front instead of a second hole, and with so many kids under 6 there, these rafts were worth more than gold. Ollie really couldn’t go down the slide without one, and sometimes we had to wait for a long, long time trying to get one of the few rafts with a seat. And once you did manage to land one you felt pretty bad since everybody kept asking you, “Are you still using that?” It all worked out in the end, but a significant portion of our day was spent in search of one of these rafts (we kept giving them up since so many people were trying to get one).

Anyway, we all had a great time. When we finally got ready to go home the next day, Ollie asked me, “Can we live here?”

I’ll call that a successful trip.

 

 

In which I earn the badge of parenting bravery

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Sometimes Ollie is just a 3 year old from the top of his head to the tips of his toes. By which I mean that, for no good reason at all, he can be so ornery and obstinate that he can make a mule look like a helpful angel.

It was just such an occasion. I don’t even remember what set him off; it was probably nothing. One minute we’re fine, the next minute he’s melting down. I was doing some project around the house, crawling around and cleaning. I was covered with dust, but I was the closest to him, so managing him fell to me. We’re talking full out rage. His face was red and he was punching and kicking me. I was trying to talk to him, to calm him down, but he was just screaming at the top of his lungs.

I was sitting on his legs so he couldn’t kick me and holding his hands so he couldn’t hit me, when an enormous piece of dust fell off my shoulder and floated oh-so-gently down at him. Unfortunately, since he was full out, vein-popping, rage shrieking, his mouth was wide open when the dust fluttered straight in.

This thing was big. Like, dime sized. Somehow he didn’t notice it. Ugh, it was gross. It settled onto one of his teeth, darkening with the moisture. I couldn’t take it.

“Ollie buddy, you have something in your mouth. Let me get it out.”

No dice. As soon as I mentioned it, he clamped his mouth shut as tight as he could, locking the dust inside. I tried not to gag.

“Ollie, buddy, please. Open up, you have something yucky in your mouth.”

Defiantly, he shook his head back and forth, with murder in his eyes.

I had to get that dust out. I had to. He was probably swallowing it as I watched, just to spite me. However, he was too mad to keep that mouth shut, and he soon commenced screaming again. The dust was still in there, taunting me. I needed to reach in and get it. If I moved fast it could be over and done with before he even knew what was going on. On the other hand, if I moved slow, I knew he would not hesitate to bite my finger off. I could see it in his eyes. He wanted me to put my fingers in his mouth. He wanted it bad.

There was no reasoning with him. There was no leaving it in there.

One. Two. Three.

I dropped my fingers between his teeth, snatched the dust ball, and pulled back, before he could even react.

That’s parenting in a nutshell: you just can’t let your raging, maniac son swallow the dust bunny, even if it costs you a finger.

A smelly weekend

/ Shane / Leave a comment

1) I remember someone telling me once that “new car smell” is actually all the rubber, plastic, and chemicals in your car airing out for the first time. So while it’s a strangely intoxicating smell, it will probably give you cancer. Which is why I didn’t really mind that our car never really had that oh-so-special new car smell.

However, it’s basically been 50 degrees below freezing since we bought that car, and apparently that was keeping all that scent in. The second the temperature crept up above 35 or so, the new car smell kicked in. I guess all that rubber, plastic, and chemicals was just waiting for a little sun to warm it up.

That smell is so recognizable, and it’s really strange to suddenly be smelling it in our 3 month old car. I have to admit, it does seem like it’s new all over again. (And getting better fuel economy now that it is warmer too! Can’t wait to see what we get in the summer.)

2) Have you ever smelled tea tree oil? Because I sure have.

Tea tree oil is an essential oil, which I think basically translates as “smelly oil”. We had a bottle of this stuff sitting in the laundry room and, by a Rube Goldberg-esque series of luck and coincidences, I managed to topple something, which toppled something, which broke the bottle on the floor. Whooo boy. Wikipedia describes the scent as “camphorous“, which means it basically smells like a combination of powerful cleaning solvents and 1940’s era purging medicine.

What could be worse than breaking a bottle of concentrated stink in the laundry room? If it’s winter and your furnace is housed in said laundry room. About a minute or so after the bottle broke, the furnace kicked on and spread the smell throughout the house.

It really wasn’t so bad. Cleaning / medicinal is really very far from the worst smell you could have circulating through your air ducts. However, any sufficiently strong smell can be pretty overpowering when you’re unable to escape it.

Between the two, it was a pretty smelly weekend.

Pen Snob

/ Shane / 5 Comments

My pen ran out of ink on my flight home the other day. I mean *the* pen. The gold Cross pen with my name engraved on it that I’ve used to write the first draft of every story I’ve ever written (yes, I write every first draft long hand).

I quickly moved through the 7 stages of grief while searching through my bag for a new pen. A regular, mundane NON-MAGICAL pen. As I wrote for the rest of the flight, I tried to decide if I really cared. On one hand, I’m not one to put a lot of stock in the power of “things” and the words were flowing just fine with this other pen. On the other hand OMG MY SPECIAL MAGIC PEN.

I had all but decided that I didn’t care and I’d just use regular pens from now on, but when I got home I found some spare ink cartridges in the back of the drawer.

Pen, you’re back! I love you! I never meant those horrible things I said! I’ll never leave you. Never! ::smooch smooch smooch::

ARG THE INK CARTRIDGE DOESN’T WORK!!

There was one more ink cartridge that does, in fact, work, except it’s blue ink. Hideous, ugly, blue ink.

I’m really trying to decide which is worse: writing in the horrible abomination known as blue ink, or just grabbing another pen. I don’t really think my special pen has special powers (and my acceptance list sort of proves THAT little assumption), but the main upsides are 1) it fits perfectly in my notebook and 2) everybody in the house knows better than to touch my sacred pen. Most pens disappear almost as fast as you can find them, but not this one.

Sara can testify to how stingy I am with the use of this pen.
“Hey, give me that pen, I need to write this down really quick.”
“Uh…this pen?”
“Yeah, really quick, I just need to write something down.”
::Me sloooooowly taking the pen out and reluctantly handing it to her while she looks at me funny::
“Okay, are you done? Give it back.”

I actually don’t even remember where this pen came from. I think it was maybe a graduation present or something? I asked on Facebook, but nobody remembered. Dad, maybe? Well, whoever you are out there that gave me this pen, know that I’ve become irrationally attached to it.

So, yeah, I’m writing in blue ink now.

Not more than 3 or 4 days later, I lost my pen at work. It wasn’t a special pen, just one I grabbed from the supply cabinet, but it was fat (despite my skinny little writing pen, I really prefer fat pens) and wrote well and I liked it. I actually searched around for it but, not finding it, grabbed a new one from my desk drawer.

Oh, the horrible abomination of this pen. Ohhh, the torture. I cannot even begin to describe how awful this pen was. I shudder to even recall how uneven the ink was, drawn across the page in letters that faded in and out. AHHHHH!

No big deal, we’ve got a whole supply cabinet full of pens. There weren’t any that matched my previous one, but surely one of the 6 or 7 varieties in there would suffice?

NO.

I ended up test-driving all of them, and only one was tolerable. They were all either super cheap ballpoints that couldn’t draw a smooth line to save their lives, or fancy-schmancy gel pens, which I cannot suffer for even a minute. Yes, this took a significant amount of time and NO I couldn’t work until this was resolved!

Luckily, a co-worker found my pen, so it is once again in my possession (it’s a BiC ReAction 1.0 in case you’re wondering).

So apparently I’ve become a pen snob. Like, the worst-of-the-worst, super duper snobby pen snob. I knew such people existed, but I never thought I would be one. In my defense, I’ve written a lot of words in pen over the past few years, so I do perhaps have a bit more use for a good pen than the average Joe.

Well, I yam what I yam, and what I apparently yam is a pen snob.