Menu Plan Monday (Sept 3, 2012)

I love summer vacation, and I love having the kids home with me all day for 2+ months, but those 2 months pass so quickly, and I find myself unwilling to pass up a trip to the farm, zoo, or park to run errands (not to mention I'm a much happier mama with two happy kids at the farm, as opposed to two bored ones grabbing boxes of Dunkaroos to toss into the cart when I'm not looking).  As a result, over this past summer vacation we ran out of milk, eggs, bread, fruit, or vegetables more times than I care to admit.  

To prevent this pattern continuing even with the kids back in school (albeit the boy only goes for the mornings), I'm back to a weekly menu plan.  I've done it off and on in the past, occasionally wrote about it on my other/old blog, and it really helps me feel more organised.  

Here's my first week, starting small.  Just the weekdays, and I'm going with all my easy, tried-and-true recipes that I go back to again and again (usually in my first week of menu planning):

Monday:  Lemon Dijon Chicken (I use thighs with this marinade) with broccoli, rice, and corn

Tuesday:  Vegetarian Chili with salad and crusty bread (this will depend on my morning allowing me to prepare this - if it doesn't, I have some chicken in the freezer that we need to eat soon anyway)

Wednesday:  I'm out, so I'll just set up G and the kids with leftover from Monday/Tuesday.

Thursday:  No sit-down dinner, due to after-school activities.

Friday:  Easy Garlic Broiled Chicken with roasted potatoes (might try these Hasselback potatoes, if I have the time and energy) and a side vegetable.

One sad winter

This is the girl's snow bear, sitting in a lake of muddy slush. Wearing her hat and mittens because, of course it was warm enough that she didn't actually need them herself. This photo pretty much captures everything about the winter of 2011/12.

Thrilling Saturday Night

Well, the kids are asleep, and you'd think the adults would be doing something at least as thrilling as watching hockey with a bowl of popcorn, but G's on his computer, mumbling about printing something or other, and I'm on mine, ignoring him.  But at least we're in the same room.  That counts for something, right?  It's downright romantic, in my world.

I'm about to continue this wild and crazy Saturday evening by going upstairs to finish cleaning our bedroom - a job that I started at 11am today, about 10 hours ago.  Yes, my progress is slow, and I'm now in trouble because G just commented that he's not feeling well and may go to bed early, which means I need to run up and move the massive piles of clothes off our bed, and make pathways through the disarray so he doesn't trip.

Disarray? What disarray?  No, in fact, there's an organisation to it all.... if organised = various piles that take up every available space, piles that I've mentally labelled with names like "Not Sure What To Do With," "Keep or Not?" "Clean Laundry that Has Taken Me So Long to Fold that I Now Consider it Re-Dirtied, So I'm Washing it All Again," and "Random Items That Go With Something Else, But I Don't Know What."

Now my challenge is going up and actually dealing with some of those piles, rather than adding new ones.

My pinterest brain

I've never really understood Twitter, despite trying a number of times to get involved or have it explained to me by Twitter devotees, but I've always thought (without a lot of confidence, since I'm reluctant to define something I don't think I fully understand) of it as news, information, and personal sharing for our busy, fast-paced, ADHD-sort of world.  As in, "no, I don't have time to call you, or even email you, but I can update you on my life in 140 characters," or "reading an entire newspaper article (newspaper? what's that?) is passe; I can get an entire day's worth of news with 5 minutes of reading on my smartphone." 

I write these things as if I'm derisive or judgmental of Twitter, but I'm not - I myself don't bother to make phone calls or read newspapers, either, and I can't even say that I at least get my information or social interaction via Twitter.  I just think it's a bizarre phenomenon, and I'm fascinated by it.  I feel almost defective because I can't get into the flow of it.

I'm reminded of Twitter because I recently re-discovered Pinterest, and have been pinning things there, in an alarmingly obsessive manner, for the past few days.  Some of the pins are useful: I have a board called "Recipes to Try," another called "Things to Knit."  However, other pins are useless at best, self-indulgent at worst:  Why do I need a board titled "Things I'm Loving" with an image of my coffee cup, or Ryan Gosling's baby blues looking right at me?  (Even weirder, why does said board have 16 followers, even though I only have 7 friends on Pinterest... this means that complete strangers are tracking the things I'm loving. Do they really care about my soap dispenser or what tv series I'm enjoying these days?)

The point is that I see at least two similarities between Pinterest and Twitter.  They both require very little time (not to say one can't, and I haven't, wasted plenty of time on both), and almost no attention span whatsoever.  Considering how long it's been since I've written a blog entry, but how many things I've pinned in the past 5 days, I'm really starting to think that Pinterest is blogging, note-taking, and scrapbooking for our busy, ADHD-sort of world.  I get the satisfaction of putting up something pretty on the web, even if that pretty thing happens to be something pretty that someone else with much more talent, energy, and intelligence than me, worked on, photographed, and put on their website.  I get to partake in a bit of self-expression, since even though they're not my things or photographs, they're things I like or even that reflect me in one way or another.  I even get the strange (and completely undeserved) mix of pleasure and curiosity when random people I don't know "like" my pins, or better yet, repin them on their own Pinterest boards.  

No point to this lengthy ramble, but perhaps you won't notice the pointlessness of this post if I share one of my "things I'm loving" pins that I tend to suspect got me most of those 16 followers.

Find me on Pinterest

The power of the smelly sheets

The boy, like many kids (actually, like many adults), has a stubborn streak.  When he gets something stuck in his head, it's near-impossible to change his mind.  The frustrating thing about it is that what he decides to allow to stick in his head is often unreasonable, rarely predictable, and usually seems to have nothing to do with anything that has happened before, is happening at the moment, or will happen in the future.

The latest evidence of this stubborn side is actually, for once, kind of paying off for me.

At 4.5 years old, he hasn't logged a lot of hours sleeping in his own bed.  He spent the first 3 years co-sleeping with me, then at some point in his third year we pawned him off on his sister, and he spent over a year sleeping with her in her queen bed (coming to my bed an hour or two before we all woke up for the morning).

Recently, we moved him to his own room, to his tiny toddler car bed that he loves to play on and jump on, but hasn't actually slept in very much.  The transition went much better than we were expecting, and every night he went to sleep happily in his bed, surrounded by pillows and stuffed animals.  As before, he'd make his way to my bed at about 6am.  This lasted a few nights, and slowly but surely, the time that he moved beds got earlier and earlier, until we were at a point where I'd go up for bed and he'd already be there, having shuffled down the hall on his own while I was still downstairs watching something like CSI: Saskatoon, or NCIS: Rochester.

I love co-sleeping, but with our queen sized bed, my semi-bad back, and G's determination to maintain his full half of the bed no matter whom I let into MY half of the bed, I wasn't sleeping well.

I was trying to figure out an effective but easy way to convince him to stay longer in his bed, but nothing was working.

Cue stubbornness.

His nighttime pullup (yes, still in pullups at night, a rant for another post) had leaked a tiny bit and made a small damp spot on the sheets on his car bed.  G was changing the sheets at bedtime that night, the boy happened to be in one of those stubborn moods, and he became adamant that he needed THOSE sheets on his bed, and no, he DIDN'T care if they were smelly.  He had no prior favourite sheets, had never given any indication he ever noticed the sheets, but suddenly, he HAD to have bumblebees on his sheets, and NO, those animals on the clean sheets were entirely unacceptable. Screw you, cute giraffes.

I sensed G was frustrated, so in trying to lighten the mood I joked to the boy that if he slept the whole night in his bed that night, he could have the smelly sheets back.  But he took me seriously, and after some negotiation, it was decided that the smelly sheets would stay on for as long as he wanted, for as long as he slept each night in his bed.  The first time he didn't sleep the whole night in his own bed, I would get to change the sheets.

(I feel the need to explain that the sheets aren't really smelly. They need changing, sure, but I'm not letting my son sleep on stinky, urine-soaked sheets.  We just call them the "smelly sheets" because that was one of the first things out of my mouth when I was first trying to convince him to let G change the sheets. By the way, not smart - don't ask a kid feeling cranky and stubborn a question like "you don't want to sleep on smelly sheets, do you?" because the answer will not be what you want it to be.)

To make a long story short (too late), he has now slept in his bed all night every night for three entire weeks, which most certainly surpasses the sum total of the random nights he's spent in his own bed in the 4.5 years leading up to this.

Last night he even came in at about 4am, and said "okay, I'm ready for clean sheets now."  After my mental fist pump, I whispered that I'd change them tomorrow.  He paused, then asked me what animals are on the new sheets.  I said I didn't know, that I'd just put on whatever was clean.  Another pause, then his head lifted, and he said "actually, I don't want you to change my sheets, I'm going to go back and sleep in my bed." And off he went!

My mom got a kick out of pointing out that, after that many years of wanting to sleep with me, not to mention in the midst of a very clingy phase that has been going on for a month now (help me!), the boy has decided that he's willing to forego special cuddling with Mommy for... stinky sheets.  So touching.

Beach Day

Despite living in a city with a selection of beaches to visit, we rarely actually go. Even for this particular beach day of which I speak, we drove to another place to go to their beach. Why, I'm not sure... same reason I've been to more museums in other cities than I've been to in my own.

Anyway, it was a day trip initiated by some friends (with kids almost the exact same ages as ours), and to be honest I wasn't all that excited about it. I knew the kids would have a good time, and that was the whole point of the thing, but I wasn't expecting that I'd enjoy it myself. I mean... inescapable sun, heat, crowds, swimming in water where various plants and animals reside? Not my idea of the best way to spend the day. 

Turns out it was a great day, for me as well as the kids.

The weather wasn't too hot (perhaps even a bit cool at times, but I'm not complaining), the crowds were entirely manageable, and mostly down at the other end of the beach. I did manage to get a nasty sunburn on my shoulders, chest, and the tip of my nose, but that didn't cause any suffering until the next day (and the day after that, and the day after that).

The kids are at a nice stage where they need us enough that we don't feel extraneous, not to mention we can still get down in the sand and build sandcastles with them, but we also had the occasional break to just sit back and have a bit of conversation where we could actually complete a sentence or two.

Speaking of conversation, it was nice because these are relatively new friends, and for someone (me) who doesn't make new friends very easily (because that requires, you know, actual talking to people, sometimes even actual eye contact at the same time), a day trip was a bit intimidating.  But they're lovely people, and we all seem to connect.

(The boy and their daughter definitely do not connect, but that is for another entry where I stress and worry about matters such as how to be a better parent, how to have successful friendships with people who don't parent exactly the same way I do, and the confounding differences between boys and girls.)

The day was leisurely, but full; we swam, ate, chatted, flew kites ($1 each at dollar store, provided so much fun for the kids... and dads too), played soccer, volleyball, frisbee, and of course there were the requisite sand castles and burying of Daddy.

All in all, a completely fabulous day, and I would say one of my favourite days of the summer holidays so far.

The kids agree!

Rashy

Both kids have come down with something this summer, that resulted in no symptoms except for a severe-looking rash, mainly on their cheeks.

The girl's showed up first and developed slowly.  I took her to the doctor on day 3 and probably would've waited even longer, except she was headed up to the cottage for the weekend and I wanted to rest easy.  Our doctor, who is almost one year into a two-year break to accompany her husband abroad for work, was back for a holiday and was working (I'd love a job that I loved so much that I'd choose to work on my vacation, instead of relaxing, visiting family and friends, etc.) so it was a great surprise when she walked into the room. 

I also thought it was good, because she knows our medical history and could have that in mind while making a diagnosis, but I think she was in a vacation frame of mind and had socialising and catching up as a priority, instead of more serious doctoring. As it was, the girl has had various minor but annoying (and mostly unexplained) skin issues for her whole life, so the doctor, using that aforementioned knowledge of our medical history, and no actual examination of my daughter that I noticed, chalked it up to "she's just got really sensitive skin, and is having a reaction to something," and sent us on our way, assuring us that we were fine to see other kids.  She suggested some benadryl if I felt like it.  In the way that some people, particularly me, do when confronted with questionable opinions from authority figures, I adopted an "I'm totally listening, and agree with everything" expression, nodded seriously, and left it at that.

When the rash had dissipated only slightly in three more days and one cheek had adopted a somewhat alarming circular-shaped rash (okay, yes, I'm neurotic, but I have a "thing" about rashes - I have a hard time convincing myself that they are not (a) an allergic reaction that's about to lead to throat swelling and death, (b) necrotizing fasciitis, or (c) some kind of exotic microscopic insect, laying eggs under the skin), I called back, and was told by the nurse to try more benalyn and re-assess in the morning.  Does benalyn cure flesh-eating disease?!

A week after the girl's rash made it's first appearance and was largely gone, the boy's cheeks turned red, and I had them back to the doctor, since it was obviously no longer simply her sensitive skin reacting to something.  We saw another doctor this time, and this time it was deemed viral, the clues being the boy's slightly red throat, and that he got it a week after his sister. Neither had any other symptoms of any sort of virus.

We were assured, again, that we needn't worry about being contagious, and sent on our way.

I gather this was the more accurate diagnosis, given that the boy's rash followed the same course as the girl's, although I'm still not 100% convinced.  Either way, we are now, knock wood, rash free.