St. Paddy's Day 2014

Yesterday was St. Paddy's Day and it was the first time the boys were really into the annual early morning Healdsburg St. Paddy's Day Parade. It's probably also the last time we'll go.

Here's a quick visual recap of previous years:

2010 as Mr. Healdsburg with baby Liam

We missed 2011 but here's Liam being sweet

2012 Liam giving me the mental finger

2013. At least they were warm.

Then there was this year. Oh man did they love it. It started out rough as usual.

Daddy, we hate you.

But once we were up and out the door it was a different story. We got to walk there for the first time since now I live so close to downtown. This meant they could take in the commotion from a distance as we approached so the shock of it was easier to take in. Once acclimated to the scene, they were unstoppable.

There are two reasons this may have been the last hurrah for us and the early morning Healdsburg St. Paddy's Day Parade. First, the last few seem to have conveniently fallen on my days off and that's probably not happening for a while. Second, the boys were destroyed afterward. They crashed from the excitement high eventually and did manage naps, but they were emotionally and physically wrecked. For the rest of the day they were like two jet-lagged borderline psychotics off their meds. Next year we'll probably sleep in.

Or maybe not...

Snack Attack

I've been trying to beat Paulie and his son Finn to grocery shopping because I buy food, whereas they buy snacks and entire pallets of canned black beans. I did this week's shop and within hours Finn came up to me and asked if I could take him with me the next time I grocery shopped. "I need more snacks," he told me.

"There are apples!" I said this very enthusiastically, because I haven't yet learned that teenagers can't be tricked with voice inflection the way little kids can. "I don't like those apples." "There are two kinds!" "Yeah I don't like either of those." "Okay. There are dried apricots!" "I hate dried apricots." "Uh huh. Well, there's some yogurt. And some grapes. And...there's all kinds of stuff." "Yeah but I want chips!"

I've never been much of a snacker. Once a month or so I make a meal out of chips and salsa, but I don't really think that counts, because it is strictly for the purpose of satisfying an intense hormonal need and if I don't get my salt quota the PMS monster will wake me up from sleep and harass me about why I didn't feed it it's chips and salsa that day. Why, hm?! WHY?! Such a nag.

So yeah, I tend not to buy snacks. I buy fruits and vegetables and pasta and things that, when put together, make a meal that isn't a burrito.

Later that night we were all hanging out around the table, and I excitedly observed that, having not been provided with chips, he was snacking on the grapes I'd put out earlier like they were the new Chip. I gave myself an imaginary high-five.


But hey, I don't want to be one of those mean people who denies a kid chips - when you want some chips you want some chips, amiright?!

So I made him some kale chips. *high five!*

Delicious kale chips

He sees the kale chips

He loves the kale chips

My work here is done.

Blogging Therapy: The Worst Day Ever

There was a moment that's been haunting me since last summer and I think if I write about it, get it out of my head and into the ether, it might help. The moment took place on a hot July day. Liam was dressed in a t-shirt, short little pants, and some beat up old hand-me-down shoes in need of retirement. I'd finally found an apartment to rent after weeks of couch surfing and was moving some boxes in a borrowed pick-up truck. I hadn't spent much time at home with the boys. My split with Erin was as amicable as they come, but things were tense so I kept my distance. I'd missed them terribly and felt relief that I had a place I could take them where I could spoil myself rotten with their company.

I didn't have a lot of stuff to move. I had hoarded dozens of cases of empty glass from work, all of which had been slated to go in the recycling bin. It was too old for commercial winemaking, but it passed the quality control standards for my home winemaking project with flying colors. I had to take the boxes to storage and Liam was "helping" me load them, the way three-year-olds do, by climbing all over whatever it is you're working on, but he wasn't his usual chipper self. I tried talking with him to figure out what was bothering him, but with his pretty severe speech delay he only had a few words mastered, and that day he wasn't using any of them. But he didn't have to. The look on his face told the whole story; he was clearly heartbroken. He had been processing everything that had been going on with Erin and I over the past few months, maybe even longer. That day it was all culminating with him seeing his daddy pack his things to leave the only home he'd ever known. He didn't understand.

To this day I don't know why I felt compelled to take pictures. I still can't look at them, or even think about them, without having to go sit alone for a while. I think there are some painful things we don't want to forget.

I'm not an emotional masochist. I like to write this blog as a record of all the fun and ridiculous joys of parenthood because they abound and I don't want to forget a single moment. But I'm new to this parenting thing and so naive. My missteps can hurt my children and the last thing any decent parent wants is to hurt their children. It's a terrifying prospect to me that we're the ones most capable of doing so.

My break-up was the right move for me, but it came with an unavoidable consequence that didn't fully impact me until I saw it so clearly on my son's face. I know it won't seem like such a big deal to some. No one died and there was no tragic accident or horrible injustice committed against humanity. But for whatever reason that moment was like a poisonous bite that won't heal, and flares up every time you scratch it.

But, if you follow the blog at all, you know there are plenty of "salving" moments. In fact, any problem the boys have with my break-up probably exists only in my head at this point. All it took for Liam to recover was for him to quickly realize that daddy wasn't going anywhere. Sure there's the half of the week I'm not with them, but when I'm with them I'm WITH THEM. In fact the only time I'm not in their faces when we're together is during the occasional private potty break, and even those brief moments are exploited for their maximum fun potential. Just this weekend one such moment was interrupted by the loud "clunk, clunk, clunk" of Finn seizing the opportunity to snatch a full glass of OJ off the breakfast table and try to wear it as a shoe. I jumped up and chased him in desperation, not so much because of the sticky mess he was making, but because the downstairs neighbors' late night obscenity screaming session had run long and they were probably trying to angrily sleep in. Liam was so happy to witness the whole scene he peed his pants. I think we're all gonna be fine.

Many Hands Make Medium-weight Work

Paulie and I have been trying to come up with a functioning chore system for our kids, (read: I grumble about the state of the house and he agrees that I should enlist more help). So far, the results are iffy. I tried just asking people to do things verbally: FAIL! Then I made a chart with rotating chores for a week: FAIL! Most recently I just gave everyone specific tasks to do the entire week long.

I tried to go easiest on those who are the least used to doing (or willing to do) chores, and loaded the rest of us up with the brunt of the rest (read: Jonah and I did most of the chores). That worked okay. 

I won't lie: when I was a kid, I had a shit-ton of chores. I made the mistake at a very young age of asking my mom how the washing machine worked and that was that - after she showed me she said "this can be your job now!" like it was fun or something. From that day forward, I washed, dried, folded and put away the laundry. Allllll of the laundry. The towels, my laundry, my brothers' laundry, visiting guests' laundry, my mother and her husband's laundry. Lots of laundry. 

But it didn't stop there!

Work, Work, Work!

I also got to dust and vacuum the living room, take the garbage out and burn it (country livin' folks!), cook meals, and do bajillions of dishes. Okay, okay, maybe I'm exaggerating there - I didn't do a bajillion dishes. Just six kids and two adults' worth.

Perhaps as a result of this, I've been a little soft with my own kids. They have chores, of course, because as much as I resented my workload as a kid and teenager, I was certainly prepared for real life after I moved out, and I pitied the fool who didn't know how to wash their own damn socks.

So I do believe in the importance of knowing how to do chores and manage a household. But I try to keep the expectations light. And I'm always surprised at how willing my kids are to do chores. 

"Jonah, can you please take out the recycling?" "Sure mom!"

"Evie, it's time to do the dishes." "Okay mama, can I use lots of soap?"

"Jonah, did you put the chickens to bed yet?" "Oop, nope, I'll go do that right now!"

The chicken whisperer

It's kinda...great. I have to vow to myself not to go the route my mother did by just turning all of the chores over to the kids, then not letting them do anything fun or extra-curricular until they finish said all chores. It's pretty easy to find a balance among all of these people. And as long as I can keep convincing them that it's fun, I think we'll be alright.

Lots of soap: check!

Greyhouse

You know all those internet videos of fathers coming back from Afghanistan to their overjoyed children? I get that twice a week, every time I pick up the boys. It is easily the best part of co-parenting. Inevitably though, once the hugging, dancing, and tears have subsided, Liam gets straight to the point. He lifts his head off my shoulder, holds my face firmly in his little hands, stares at me way too seriously for a four year old, and says "greyhouse."

What is greyhouse? Greyhouse is my shitty little apartment. Liam and Finn LOVE my shitty little apartment. I don't get it.

I always pick them up right after work so I never get to go directly home, there are always errands to run along the way. The boys must know this by now, but it doesn't prevent them from completely losing their minds when I deviate at all from the straight shot to greyhouse. Liam gets all Shakespearean screaming "GREYHOOUUUUSE!!!!!" while Finn just screams "NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!"

Is it because it's like their little club house? Who knows, I'm just so grateful. I'm grateful because their love of the place helps assuage the crippling guilt I feel for my failed marriage that forced them out of a luxurious three-bedroom home with a pool, into a crappy second floor shanty. Maybe when they were sleeping soundly in their well-appointed private rooms they were actually dreaming of someday sharing a living room/kitchen instead. Perhaps they always wished that the pool was a puddle in the parking lot, that the garden was a concrete stairwell, and that the birds chirping in the maple tree were the downstairs couple screaming obscenities at 1am.  Well, dream of it no more my loves! Your wishes are granted!!  

Cohabitation

If you haven't already heard (like, maybe you've been hanging out under rocks for a while? Or you just don't pay much attention, perhaps?) Paulie and I moved in together in December. December 15th, to be exact. For all of our fans who pretend not to care about the majorness of major holidays, that is ten days before Christmas. This was a dumb time to move and it was a bit of a whirlwind, but because we and our friends are incredibly amazing and talented people, we totally rocked it. Big time.

Paulie and I make a great team. This is basically due to the fact that I don't nag him about stuff, because I am a patient and loving woman. Also, he just...does stuff that needs to be done, without being asked - what the whaaaaaat?! Yeah, I know. It's kind of incredible.

As for me, I do the dishes. And, I make a concerted effort to not lose my shit when, say, a lone upside-down slipper lays askew near the top step of our front porch for several days, without anyone seeming to notice or care. Or a wadded-up piece of paper towel lays in front of the garbage (as opposed to in it, for my less tidy readers who might not see what the problem is there). We're all still learning about each other's comfort zones and habits, so there's some space for total and complete error in there.

There are obvious advantages to living together. The biggest one so far is knowing where we'll be sleeping on any given night. Knowing where we'll be hosting when we invite people over is handy, too. Gone are the constant emails, texts and phone calls confirming first the plans, then the 'your place or mine', then the 'can you bring over your big pan?' then the 'oh shit I forgot my big pan, I'll have to go back for it, gaaaah!'

Then there's the whole 'oh, things are different now that we're living together' thing. For example, keeping up any level of mystery has gone to complete handbasketed hell. I've seen homeboy pee so many times - not because we're in the bathroom together a whole lot, but because he often forgets to close the door because...doors. I've grown fond of the sound of his sleeping after he's applied his snore-b-gone nose strip - it's adorable! And unfortunately he now knows that sometimes when I'm kind of grumpy, it's not because I'm just tired or PMSing, which were my go-to excuses when we lived separately. Sometimes it's because I'm off my game and haven't pooped in more than a day.

See, this was taken before we lived together.

All in all, living together has been pretty magical. I mean sure, there are many more bonks in the head of that ever-sneaky reality to deal with, but having a really, really great sense of humor, a natural ability to look at the world through uninhibited rosy glasses, and an inherent ability to look the other way just in the nick of time makes it all seem a lot more manageable. And, we're loving it.

"I swear to god if I don't poop soon SOMEONE DIES!"

Peace of Cake

People always warn you against giving your kids cake because they'll be bouncing off the walls, but I've found the opposite to be the case. I went to my friend Sarah's birthday party last night with the boys. I'd taken the boys there once before and vowed never to do it again. They have a marketable talent when it comes to testing a house for "child-proofness." I swear I could charge new parents $50 a pop to have my kids test their homes out for just 3 minutes and make a quick fortune. It would probably pay for college. Sarah's house has scalable furniture, thousands of dollars worth of fragile things within reach, and even one of those wrought iron fireplace tool sets. It is the wrong place to set the boys free.

But they're not to be blamed. Being a little kid is very confusing. There's a lot of inner turmoil. Little ones are plagued with such conflicting desires: wanting freedom and independence but also needing security and safety, seeking parental approval but needing to head butt daddy in the crotch when he's texting, not wanting daddy to get evicted from his upstairs one-bedroom apartment but jumping off the bed at 6am is a blast, it's nuts! This inner battle fuels destructive behavior and the need to smash glass figurines with a wireless keyboard.

Fortunately, last night there were balloons. Sarah's daughter had littered the floor with dozens of balloons which was a perfect means to sublimate Finn and Liam's rampage long enough for me to say a quick happy birthday and down a glass of wine. I figured that would be it for my visit, but…

Lo'…there was cake. 

Plop a little cake down in front of a small child and suddenly their confusing world becomes very simple. The entire universe around them, and the conflict raging within, becomes hazy, out of focus, and very quiet. Nothing exists but them and a piece of cake.

Nirvana

I had a second glass of wine.