This weekend at the lake

Aiming not to disappoint, we were again busy with summer-y fun, this time under the guise of a visit to my mom's rental cabin on a week lake in NJ. The weather was none too promising when we left on Friday driving us inside to the cheesy delights of a NJ kid destination. This one was called the Giggle Station or something like that. It was kind of a weird amalgamation of boardwalk, climbers, and odd train, plus pizza! (sadly without the beer) but the girls seemed to like it.


Post odd train ride

Fortunately, Saturday and Sunday proved much finer weather and we got to do lots of lake activities, like playing on the wee beach and a kayak ride (a first for both Lottie and I.)


Picnic on the beach


The rowers return


Izzy keeping watch on our progress having declined a "boat ride" herself

Saturday night we visited our second carnival of the season, this time with my sister and her two sons. The highlight of this one hands down was going on the ferris wheel with Isabel. She was so delighted by the quick uptake and large, high loops. She announced that she would very much like a carnival permanently installed in her back yard.


Izzy, Lottie, and Baz on the train


Whirling Strawberries

Teaching this old dog some new tricks

One of the hardest parts of being a parent for me is to overcome my natural tendencies towards drama and the occasional bout of pessimism. For example, in the face of tired, yelling children this morning, I reminded them that the sun was shining and it was the beginning of a new, lovely week. Did I feel it would be a lovely week? Absolutely not. I am tired myself- tired of my fellowship, tired of winter, tired of not sleeping enough, and tired of crabby kids in the morning. But, fortunately, the sane part of my brain took over and what came out of my mouth was optimism.

This need to suppress my natural response is never so keen as when I am learning something new. I am a really SLOW learner. Ask Ryan who tried to help me ski. Ten years later I may finally be getting the hang of it. Or my knitting teacher who told me she never, before me, was unable to teach someone how to knit. (I do knit now for the record.) It's almost as if part of my brain goes into slow motion when I am learning something new and I absolutely cannot do it without tons of practice. This becomes a self reinforcing loop since taking a long time to learn a skill is a matter of great frustration for me, increasing my propensity towards drama and pessimism.

My new skill of the season is sewing. For some reason, perhaps all the craft blogs I read these days, I decided I wanted to learn to sew. Visions of sundresses and appliqued shirts for the girls danced before me. I even made it a New Year's resolution. So last week, after a slow start (and a special thanks to Elaine who did not laugh in my face when I showed up at her house for a sewing lesson sans fabric, pattern, or machine), I bought a sewing machine. It took me at least an hour to figure out all the movable parts and how to thread the thing, taking up most of my "play time" for that day but within a few days, I was able to thread, change the bobbins, and sew somewhat straight lines on a practice scrap. On I moved yesterday to something a bit bigger. I went to the local fabric shop to buy some more scraps and ended up coming home with some flannel to make blankets for the girls. (Not that they need blankets, but a blanket seemed to be the easiest project I could imagine.) Mistake #1- taking the girls with me to said fabric shop. Now they knew they stood to benefit from my experimentations. Mistake #2- telling Izzy I would work on it yesterday. Mistake #3- allowing Izzy to get up from her fake nap to "help" me with my project. Picture a scene with Isabel asking me every two minutes if her blanket is done yet, me completely unable to sew a straight line despite the fact that I pinned the seam, Izzy resorting to talking to herself none stop (she has a very active imaginary life in which she and her stuffed animals take on multiple roles) in between asking for a progress update, me actually sewing a line straight off the fabric and then breaking the needle, and finally, me totally freaking out and asking Izzy to go down in the basement and watch daddy stain crown molding.

I actually went grocery shopping to chill out and then came home and decided to make myself a smoothie as a treat. Smoothies are the latest craze in the Schroeder household since I discovered the joys of frozen fruit in Whole Foods. Alas, even yesterday's smoothie attempt went pathetically awry as our blender coughed and churned and began to ooze smoothie all over the counter from the base of the glass pitcher. Even smoothies were too much for my crafting ability yesterday! Fortunately, in honor of the Oscars, our dinner consisted of frozen canapes ala Trader Joes so there was no chance for me to burn the house down. Ryan, of course, was so supportive of my craft meltdown that he actually had to support himself with a wall he was laughing so hard.

In the end, I managed to not so delicately pull out the horrible seam from the flannel and sewed a less crooked, but crooked all the same, line the second time. And, despite the fact that I wanted to morph into Medea when Izzy asked again how her blanket was coming, I calmly said that I understood she was excited but that these things take time, especially when mom is learning.

Raising good people

Maybe it's just my age or the fact that I find myself with a little more time these days to think now that the girls are able to entertain themselves for at least a few minutes every day, but I've been pondering the notion of raising my kids. We're slowly moving beyond the point in our parenthood where we're simply responding to physical needs (although we still do a lot of that as well) and into the phase that requires some sort of moral framework, for lack of a better term. And of course this is where is gets tricky.

How do you raise a "good" person? And what is a good person anyway? I'd like to teach my girls something beyond learning right from wrong. I'd like to give them a foundation from which they are able to view themselves and the world around them in productive, interconnected ways. I'd like them to have a healthy sense of self- to accept their limitations but not to be limited by them, if that makes sense. I'd like them to be physically active and not have the same fear of food that I developed in my teens. I'd like them to see themselves as attractive but not be cocky or influenced by that. I'd like to see them connected to a community and willing to give back to that community (however defined) as much as they take. In short, I'd like them to be near perfect people. (Imagine emoticon here.) But how do you go about setting up a framework for kids without becoming preachy or demanding? I'm already finding with Isabel that if I don't step into this void quickly and firmly, other people will.

It's funny how quickly kids are influenced. Izzy, until this year, existed in a sort of self-involved bubble. She said please and thank you, shared with her friends most times, and was responsive to commands and questions. All in all, what you might call a generally polite child. But as far as I could tell, she didn't think about things much in any way recognizable as cognitive. That's changed. She now comes home concerned about our diets, telling us sugar is bad for our bodies. She needs to wash her hands incessantly, taking her teachers' remonstrations about germs far more seriously than they could have imagined. More troubling, though, she's come home and called people fat with the clear implication that there is something wrong with someone who weighs more than you do. I am not entirely sure she understands most of this, but it's clear that she listens to what she hears at school, whether from her teachers or friends, and takes much of it to heart.

This, of course, doesn't make Isabel a bad person, but it's not the person I'd like her to be. Making my own bias quite plain, I've come to believe that a lot of parenting these days is dictated by fads (baby Einsteins, cloth diapers, and carrots only for snacks) that takes a lot of the joy out of childhood and, quite frankly, out of parenting. My hope for myself and for my kids is that we can see beyond all the fluff and live lives that are balanced and ultimately happy. Because I simply cannot believe that a life that has no cupcakes at school to celebrate your birthday is happy. (A rule, by the way, being enforced in Montgomery County, MD.)

So where do we go from here? Well, beyond trying to reinforce the importance of a healthy diet (and yes, we eat lots of whole grains, fruits and veggies, drink organic milk all with caving in to our sweet teeth) AND the importance of exercise, this year we're planning to introduce the concept of volunteering. This will be lost on Lottie, but I am hoping it makes an impression on Izzy. First up in our projects is joining up with Project Linus to make blankets for chronically ill children. Second, we're going to volunteer in a river clean-up project on the Anacostia River for Earth Day. I'm hoping that these experiences will help the girls to imagine the world beyond themselves in ways that are safe but meaningful.

Wish me luck.

A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words

In my never ending quest to fill up our time with sometimes futile activities, I thought it was high time to take the girls to have their pictures formally taken. Part of this decision was driven by a small measure of jealousy of all the formal pictures that populated the walls of our hosts' home in Kansas and part of it was driven by the fact that as fun as my random snaps can be, it's always nice to have someone else do the work and do it well every now and then.

Our experience wasn't quite as seamless as it could have been, but I think the several hours we spent yesterday encapsulated our family so well that I had to share. I should preface the story by saying that Ryan is very anti-portrait. He claims to have had too many bad experiences with the JC Penney portrait studio as a kid that the thought of even having them done makes him crabby. (I think he's just using it as an excuse to be crabby but I do have a certain amount of antipathy myself for the faux pastoral scenes, the hot lights, bad hair, and weird angles of the portrait studios/school pictures of my youth.) So the fact that he agreed to go with me to the mall to take the girls for their session was a feat unto itself. We got to the mall a full hour before it officially opened and sadly, a half hour before our scheduled appointment. I couldn't exactly remember the time of the appointment (case number 336 in point why I should have a blackberry if only I could justify it) so I wanted to make sure we were on time. Tragically, the Picture People failed to consult their appointment book the day before and did not show up until 11 AM. Facing a possible failure in executing the picture session, I was wracked with feelings of insecurity, flakiness, and self-recrimination, all popular themes these days with me as I enter week 2 of the health challenge. Don't worry, this is pretty common until I decide this course of action is not for me. The girls were bummed but were taking it in stride, arguing over who would hold the cat and who the dog stuffed animals they brought along. Both had erupted into spontaneous tears so many times during the hour we were there with nothing to do that I was sure if said photo session were to happen both would look like bloated, red floating heads.

Finally, the lights went on in the Picture People and Izzy and I charged in. Once she decided she wasn't going to be eaten alive by the photographer, she was all for some mugging. After reproaching the woman at the desk for leaving me hanging (and silently for making me feel so bad about myself- how dare she!), the girls and I entered the changing room (aka slightly sleazy bathroom) to change. Iz and I had worked out a complicated formula by which she would take some pictures in her preferred outfit and then switch to mine. Thank god the Picture People has no sitting fee so we could accomplish this with little sweat. And mug and grin and sally about did my little ladies. Lottie, of course, demonstrated none of hesitation Izzy usually displays and marched right into one frame. When we tried to take her out, she sat down. Izzy for hours and hours after talked about how much fun it was to pose. (Note here to the uninitiated: last time I took Iz to have her picture taken, she yelled and cried so much that I had a total of 1, that's right, 1 usable picture after a half an hour of trying.) Unfortunately, Picture People does not release the digital files (at least not for the price I paid!) and without a scanner, I can't show them to you here.

After loitering through the mall and having lunch, we returned to the Picture People to view our photos. Here's where Ryan's funny part comes in. PP "markets" its pictures by choosing some of the prints they think are nice and sticking them in frames to show post session customers. Sadly, Ryan didn't know this. When the PP lady helping us came out with a stack of large, framed photos of the girls, Ryan was this close to falling off his viewing stool. He actually said out loud, "I think I am going to be sick." I had to explain to him in front of PP lady that they were just promotional items and that no, I had not in fact ordered all of them. The PP lady thought it was so funny, she directed him to the changing room/slightly seedy bathroom and then proceeded to tell all of her coworkers who howled in laughter. It was second only to the time when Ryan almost fainted when having his blood drawn for our marriage license. In fact, he was so moved by the PP experience, he had to go home and take a nap to calm down. (I am not making this up.)

So, after all of that, we have some lovely new pictures of the girls. Ryan's calmer today but I think he's living in fear of my idea to have a photographer come to the house in the spring. More on that later...

My Lovely Man

Prepare yourself for some gooey stuff here.  (I promise not to make this a habit.)  Ryan and I celebrated our 8th anniversary yesterday.  We went out to dinner last night and after a strict rejoinder that we would not talk about work (which of course was broken by the time desert came), I thought I would offer a quiz to get the conversation started: what are your three favorite memories from our eight married years together?  Ryan's were sweet and not necessarily predictable: scenes from our honeymoon, the surprise party I threw for him for his 30th birthday, our trip to California.  He said when you add in the kids, hands down our annual pilgrimage to apple pick is among his favorite collection of memories.  I, of course, countered with mine- celebrating our first anniversary in our new house, California, and telling him I was pregnant with Isabel.  

But here are a few more that I didn't share with him:

--Watching him swaddle Isabel in the hospital, a job he took very seriously

--Listening to him tickle the girls.  Somehow he can make them shriek with laughter so much better than I can

--Watching him hoist Lottie up to the upper levels of our mammoth Christmas tree this past Sunday so she could put her ornament on

--His omelets and pancakes, which are way better than mine

--How any and all car rides are much more preferable when he's along, even if he passes out faster than the girls

--His willingness to try and teach me to play golf, ski, throw a baseball properly

--And the way he sniffs new tennis balls before serving.