Category Archives: kids

Sushi conversations

Amelia: “I love sushi. It’s my second favorite thing.”

Me: “What’s your first favorite thing?” 

Amelia: “I have lots of first favorite things. My best second favorite thing is sushi and miso soup. My first favorite thing – I have two first favorite things: pancakes and those meatballs we had yesterday. They were so good, right mama?”

Grocery Store Questions

Baxter: “Are you sad that you’re going to die?”

Me: “Yes, but everybody dies eventually. And I’m not going to die for a really long time.”

Bax: “Well, I’m sad you’re going to die. And Amelia is sad you’re going to die. I guess we are a sad family.”

Saturday morning journaling 

Coffee with my best girl.
Amelia’s proud of her writing.
Reading to Baxter about himself

This morning Tom is making banana-chocolate-chip pancakes and bacon, and Amelia and I went out to sit on the back porch and write in our journals. I’d like to encourage Amelia to keep up her writing practice through the summer, and journaling seems like a good way for us to do something special together, get me writing more, and have her keep writing through the summer. As we write, Baxter is jittering around in our orbit, making us laugh. He does silly things and then tells Amelia to write about it. Then she reads him what she wrote, and he does more silly stuff. Repeat as necessary.

 

Today is shaping up to be a really good one. We’ll have a delicious breakfast, then hit the grocery store for some provisions (we’re out of maple syrup, for example), then I’m taking Amelia for a mommy-daughter lunch (probably sushi) and then to Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden for an hour or so. Then we’ll do some trailer prep in the afternoon, getting ready for our big camping trip next weekend. This evening, I’m having dinner with my sisters — probably at Jade Teahouse — and then we’re taking a painting class at The Loaded Brush. I love how these (semi-corny, yes) group painting classes help me quiet the critical judge in my head and help me get used to following my gut. Tomorrow Tom goes on a three-day business trip, so I’m trying to get all the fill-my-emotional-cup, single- or no-kid fun in that I can!

Hope you have a kick-ass Saturday, too. ❤

 

This is a thing now

Every day for about a week now, Baxter has emerged from his room in the morning saying, “Mom, I got up too early.” He proceeds to make a little bed for himself on the couch so he can rest for a few minutes before the perpetual motion machine that is his body currently gets revved up enough to blast him back into whirling dervish mode Here’s what it looked like today.  

Handsome

 Overheard from the other room this morning: 

Amelia: “Bax, come here.”

Bax, whiny: “No, I don’t want to have my hair bwushed.”

Amelia: “Don’t you want to look handsome?”

Bax: “I already AM handsome!”

He let her brush it eventually. 🙂 When done, she kissed him and said, “There, now you look cute.”

Bax, interrupting: “I look HANDSOME.”

Amelia: “You look cute AND handsome. You’re the king of the cute, and I’m the queen of the cute.”

Bad night

  

Amelia had anxiety-insomnia between 11:30pm and 1:30am (at least) last night, with Bax waking up a few times in there just for good measure. We’re accustomed to the kids sleeping peacefully through the night these days, so I’m pretty wrecked this morning — which calls for strong measures. I made myself coffee instead of tea. Watch out world, we’re all grumpy today. 

Homemade marshmallows! 

Yesterday, Tom made a batch of peppermint marshmallows, and this morning he and the kids cut them up and put them away for the big all-school family camping trip we have coming up in June.

Here are the kids, supervising Tom cutting the candy after breakfast and getting wee tastes (and larger tastes).

marshmallows right after breakfast?? Awesome!
CRAZY marshmallow face!
A close up of Tom’s cutting technique
Marshmallow face!

Then once Baxter’s sugar level no longer allowed him to sit in a chair, he whizzed off to get into mischief and Amelia finally begged to help long enough that we let her get her hands “dirty.”

Amelia got to coat the candy in the cornstarch mixture so they wouldn’t stick to each other
Marshmallows all cut up
Minty marshmallows for gourmet s’mores!

Bet you wish you were coming camping with us! 🙂

Learning face

  

We’re learning about worms, with an eye to start vermicomposting. Portland has public composting, in which you can put all your food waste into the yard waste bin and have it taken away by the city every week. Since we mived to Milwaukie, we have been putting our food waste in the trash, and it just drives me crazy. The kids are so accustomed to composting at school and from our old house that they look at me like I’m crazy when I tell them to scrape their plates into the trash. I wanted to get back to composting, but frankly was not looking forward to buying a $300 rotating compost bin and knew from experience that we wouldn’t pitchfork a pile. 

My friend got a worm composting system and didn’t keep up with it, and she offered it to me. So now we have a Worm Factory with two trays and I’m trying to learn about what it would take to start using it. 

Of course Amelia wanted to know what I was doing and then spotted a video on the website, which led to another video, and now the kids have been watching worm videos on YouTube for 15 minutes. I’m counting on Amelia to “give me a lesson” (as they say in her Montessori school) on what she’s learned while I was making quesadillas. 🙂 

Getting her out of her own head

Stop haunting my 6yo, lady.
Stop haunting my 6yo, lady.

Since allowing Amelia to watch Disney’s The Little Mermaid on Sunday night, I have had to think up lots and lots of good ways to get her out of her terrible bedtime-anxiety-thought-spirals. She gets herself really worked up: afraid of getting afraid while thinking of the scary parts of the movie. Even though I distinctly remember struggling with the exact same thing as a child, it’s still maddening to keep trying to calm her down and then have her dissolve into panicked tears for what seems like no good reason.

It’s possible that my strategies are all crap, and the ones I think worked are just the ones that bored her to sleep — but that’s a win in and of itself, I guess. We’ve tried doing math, talking about happy moments to think about instead, planning fun outings for the summer, talking about why the story doesn’t even makes sense, etc. I even busted out my feminist critique of the story and waxed philosophical about the repercussions that might arise from trying to start a loving relationship when you had given up your main method of self-expression.

Last night’s winner: practicing her cursive writing on the mattress with an imaginary pencil. Sensory, concrete, and probably super-boring after a while.

Got any other recommendations for ways to pull a kid out of an anxiety attack? Because I have the feeling I’ll need new ideas tonight.