the color of running

saturday marked what i expected to be the highlight of my ~7 years of parenting - the moment that my interests and my child's merged together in some magical cosmic swirl of happiness.  bea and i ran a 5k. 

sort of.

the race was the houston color run and the whole point of the run was to get splashed with dyed cornstarch while shuffling about the streets of downtown houston.  while the 'race' wasn't timed, there was at least a vague expectation of jogging between cornstarch throwing stations (each ~1k apart).  i can knock out a 5k in about 25-26 minutes on a good day.  it took us over an hour to reach the finish line.

bea was only able to run about a quarter of a mile before getting a stitch in her side and spent the remainder of the run apologizing to me.  it was pretty much the lowlight of my ~7 years of parenting.  i have become one of those overbearing mothers that eventually get featured on a tlc reality show berating their daughters for not excelling in something they (the daughter) clearly has no personal interest in.  bea hated running but i think she hated disappointing me even more.  we managed to cheer one another up after some hugging and crying on an overpass and played in the last cornstarch station, yellow.  i am presently googling child-friendly salons in houston for a mother/daughter manicure outing - i figure its only fair to do something that i don't like but would make the beazle happy. 

o beautiful for spacious skies

election day is here at last and the munchkins and i voted this morning (early voting is for non-ceremonial suckers).  it was a little nostalgic since hardie was just a few weeks old and bea a mere toddler when we voted in the 2008 election but that nostalgia quickly gave way to regret as i tried to wrangle too pop-tart-infused kids through the crowded polling place.  both kids kept trying to push buttons and run around and peek at what other people were doing and run around and sit on the floor and run around and run around and run around.  i managed to keep their attention long enough to have them vote on a local school bond issue and then the three of us pressed the big red 'cast ballot' button together.

yay democracy!

where oh where has my little blog gone

since robby's iraq visa has been stalled for weeks, i haven't had much need to update my little blog here.  doesn't make sense to document the kids' life for their dad when he is around, right?  thing is?  i miss it.  i miss being able to reflect on our lives and sometimes maybe have a poignant insight into...yeah, who am i kidding - i like posting pictures of my children.

i'm also having a bittersweet morning since last night i said goodbye to the last vestige of babyhood - hardie now sleeps in big boy panties.  i didn't attempt overnight potty training with either of my kids, figuring the financial cost of pull-ups to be less than the physical and emotional cost of waking up to take a sleeping baby to the bathroom so they don't wet the bed.  i figured i'd just let it go and eventually it would work itself out, hopefully before junior high.  with each, i waited until i could no longer remember a wet pull-up in the morning and just stopped bothering with them.  so last night, a Very Excited Hardie got to sleep in big boy panties.  while i'm super excited to save the cash and cabinet space by not requiring giant bags of disposable underpants, i kept help but look around and see nary a single baby item.  no diapers, no pacifiers, no bottles, no sippy cups, no tiny utensils, no tiny plates, no clothes with snaps, no alphabet blocks.  my kids watch cartoons with plots and brush their own hair and ride bikes without training wheels.  they lose teeth and tie shows and tell each other secrets.  they still come to me when they get hurt or want to be held but, mostly, i am slowly drifting away from the center of their universe. 

i applaud their independence but a part of my heart aches knowing that i will never again inhale the weird cheerios breath of my newborn baby.  i guess i'll have to make due with awkwardly sticking my nose into babies who do not belong to me.  i apologize in advance, present and future new mothers.  

big boy with flashlight

Hiatus

Since I keep this primarily for the benefit of Robby while he's overseas, I am taking a brief hiatus while he is in the states and I am stuck in Fort Worth for work.

Be back next week.

world 8

in an effort to break the kids of their wii habit, i try to keep them out of the house as much as possible.  sure - it would be easier to just stand my ground and NOT allow them to play while we're home but there is only so much screaming and thrashing one human being can take before caving.  thankfully, the kids have made it through 8 of the 9 worlds in mario.  my fingers are crossed that they save the damn princess within the next week and slowly lose interest.  hopefully.

since i like to prove that my kids' intellect is not rapidly deteriorating with every bleep and bloop of video games, i try to squeeze in actual knowledge around the mundane tasks of life.  over dinner, i tried to explain halves and fourths using our food.  i'm pretty sure the take-away from this lesson is that one half of spinach equals zero because hardie doesn't like yucky stuff.  otherwise, i am pleased to announced that bea has mastered the four cardinal directions.  while taking a bath, she made a pirate ship, complete with compass, and then explained which direction each pirate's sword was facing.  i tried to explain fractions using spinach and tilapia, bea explains north and south using weapons.  clearly we are never ever ever going to make it in regular school. 

freebirds etiquette lesson

a lesson in itchy foilage

counting black beans

the arts: literature and fashion

weekend wrap-up, now with more napping

this weekend was both busy and profoundly lazy.  saturday was the last bout of the derby season (yay) and the kids came with me to see the game.

i'd like to say that this was the end of the night, but this is pretty much what the kids did while i skated.  after the game bea woke up enough to congratulate me on my win but went right back to sleep.  i don't think hardie woke up at all.  they are so supportive, those tiny people.

no one was interested in church sunday morning.  no one.

but things got a little rosier at breakfast. 

i'd like to say that we spent the balance of sunday being active and not watching tv or playing wii but i would also like to say that i don't lie so, um, yeah.  in an effort to not feel completely useless, we did have two really bad science lesson.  the first was dissecting a wasp's nest and the second was popping popcorn.  in both instances i was learned that, for the most part, i am science dumb.  i also learned that writhing wasp pupae are universally creepy.  next week i will either look up actual information before exposing my kids to 'um, yeah...the popcorn...gets...hot? and then explodes.  it makes a cool noise.'

staph meeting

did i mention that the kids' staph infection is finally under control?  did i mention that my own staph infection is not? 

stupid kid cooties.

censored for decency's sake