love to the power of awesome
August 7th, 2010
My friend Kassie wrote a blog post the other day about how much fun it’s been for her and Joe to hang out with some of their preteen and teenage relatives recently, which has reaffirmed their decision to have kids. She asked any parents reading her post to share the good stuff about having kids. I left a mile-long comment sharing my thoughts, and Kassie told me I should make it into its own blog post. Voila.
Before I share my parental dirt, let me say this: Of course whether or not to have kids is an intensely personal decision, and I firmly believe that anyone who doesn’t want kids should NOT have them. That said, and knowing and loving you and Joe as I do, I think you will be some of the best parents any kid could ask for, and that your kids will probably be some of the coolest, smartest, kindest, most fun people to ever walk the planet.
Being a parent is hard, yes. But I think you guys have been around your cousins and nephews (and honorary nieces and nephews) enough that you know about all the hard stuff. You’re prepared for it. You probably don’t get to hear about the good stuff nearly often enough.
On an episode of Frasier once he told Roz that the great thing about being a parent, the thing you don’t know till you have kids, is that you don’t just love your kids. You fall in love with them, too. And it’s so true.
The things like poop explosions and middle-of-the-night vomiting and constant worry about your child’s safety aren’t really a big deal. For some reason, when it’s your kid you’re dealing with, those things pale in comparison to the good stuff. It’s a little embarrassing—and totally liberating—how proud a grown adult can be about a baby’s smile or love of smushed peas or ability to do a thumbs-up.
Little kids say hilarious things on a regular basis, which has great entertainment value.
And older kids are the best! When I was a summer camp counselor, I remember being really nervous about my first cabin full of young teenagers. Would I be able to control them? Would they be too cool for me? Would they laugh at and/or ignore everything I said!? Of course that turned out to be my FAVORITE age to work with. Later in college I was a middle-school tutor for four years, and I loved that too. Teenagers can be a pain in the rear, sure, but so can toddlers and preschoolers. But teenagers are so awesome with their enthusiasm and fresh perspective on “grown-up” problems.
Having kids teaches you how to be selfless, how to put another person’s well-being and happiness above your own. And that can only be a good thing in this world, and for our own personal growth, right? Just today I had a pregnancy-hormone-driven RAGE-filled temper explosion that got directed at Annalie and made her cry for ten minutes. It sucked and made me feel awful. I never want to feel like that again; I never want to make another person feel like that again. But when it was over and Annalie came snuffling out of her room, she ran at me and wrapped her arms around me in such a big hug and whispered, “I’m sorry, mama. I know you’re having a bad day,” and my heart broke in two in a really fantastic way.
The love you feel for your kids really isn’t like anything else in the world. It’s like love to the power of awesome. If it could only be bottled and sprayed over the entire Middle East we’d probably have a lot fewer suicide bombings.
(Note that this is probably the corniest you will ever hear me get. I’m done now.)
(Italicized portion was originally a comment on the post Breeders at Bravely Obey.)
dead tree came DOWN
August 2nd, 2010
Finally! The dead tree in our backyard is gone! You know, the dead tree that had reportedly been dead for a couple of years before we moved here, the one that towered right over our deck and roof, the one that lost branches every time there was a rainstorm or a windy day, the one that we were promised six weeks ago would be cut down “on Thursday”? I guess Monday is the new Thursday because this morning a tree-removal crew showed up and a few hours later when they left that tree was nothing but a stump in the ground.
And a bunch of firewood for us to use this winter. Score!
Annalie sez: thumbs up for no more dead tree!
.
How hot was it today? It was so hot, that just being in the swimming pool wasn’t enough, Annalie needed the sprinkler on too.
Yes, you’re reading that correctly. That temperature reading is 112F. Now, this is a cheap thermometer we bought on clearance at Target, so I tend to take whatever it’s telling me with a grain of salt. But when I checked online it said the temp in our town was 105F, and that’s not counting the horrid humidity. No wonder my brain seems to have melted a bit.
Troy and I got into the pool with Annalie for a little while, but we were cramping her style. She wanted to splash and we wanted to not be splashed, so we dried ourselves off and baked on the deck for a while, armed with large glasses of iced lemon-limeade.
Eventually Annalie got out too. As she dried herself off, she draped her towel around herself toga-style and said, “Look, Mommy! I’m a Greek person!”
Today was one of those mishmash Saturdays where we did a little of this and a little of that. In addition to hanging out in the pool, we did some cleaning and straightening up around the house and yard. I made Brenda’s stir-fry for lunch and for once got the sauce exactly right. Annalie and Troy hung out in the basement for a while, watching 80s movies and eating snacks while I had a nice long chat with my mom on the phone.
And we hacked a pink girly foo-foo ceiling fan for Annalie out of a boring white one!
When we moved into this house, none of the bedrooms had ceiling fans. That wasn’t a problem in the spring, but as summer heated up the bedrooms tended to get stuffy, especially at night, because our air-conditioner is weird. It keeps the living room and the whole basement cool, but the kitchen floor gets icy-cold, and the bedrooms stay several degrees warmer than is comfortable. Troy and I got a ceiling fan for our bedroom a few weeks ago, and had planned to get one for Annalie’s room when we got back from our trip to Omaha.
Of course when we took Annalie to Home Depot to look at fans, she fell in love with a pink one, decorated with ornate white hearts, that cost $100. If she didn’t get that pink fan, she was gonna be so very sad, you guys. We explained that the price was a bit too high, and although she bravely said she understood, her lip started to quiver. I pointed out a less-expensive cute fan with rainbow-colored blades and tried to talk her into that one, but she had her heart set on pink.
Then Troy came up with a brilliant idea. We picked up a plain white fan for half the price of the fancy pink one, plus a $3 can of pink spray paint. Later we picked up two dollars’ worth of sparkly white flower and butterfly stickers from Michaels. Troy painted the blades with two coats of the spray paint, and once the paint was dry Annalie and I arranged the stickers on them. Troy installed the fan, and voila! That’s how you hack a girly pink ceiling fan for half the price of the one at the store, and make your kid happy at the same time.
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