Ruby Blog: 3 Kids, 2 Moms, 1 Blog

Veggie Tales

rubyslipperguide@gmail.com — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 04:43:00 GMT

Raising a vegetarian child is kind of tricky. There aren't as many options at McDonald's, although they are doing an admirable job with sliced apples. It can be awkward going to other people's homes for dinner. And the traditional Thanksgiving mac and cheese is not what the pilgrims imagined.

But it turns out that the tricky part of raising a vegetarian kid isn't the food, it's the talking. Her talking. About being a vegetarian. All the time. To everyone.

Here is a typical exchange:
Stranger: "Would you like paper or plastic?"
Me: "Shoot, I forgot my bags! Ok, paper."
My daughter: "I'm a vegetarian!"
Stranger: "Do you have any coupons?"

Toy Story

rubyslipperguide@gmail.com — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 21:21:00 GMT

My mornings begin the same way each day. Get up to the sound of children calling to Mommy and Daddy, stumble bleary-eyed into the kitchen for a cup of coffee, and only when a hot cup of java is in my hands do I make my way to the couch to sit down and acknowledge the day ahead. This process takes maybe 7 minutes, which is enough time for several bins of toys to explode in my living room. The catalysts for these explosions are two, smallish children who seem to get immense joy from literally tossing toys into the air. Where these toys land doesn't matter; they're typically out of the room before the toys hit the ground. I've hit the end of my rope with this and have had to declare a War on Toys. General Mom is on a mission and Operation Pick Those Toys Up Right Now, Young Ladies is officially underway.

I don't recall from my own childhood what it is about dumping every toy I owned into sporadic heaps around a room that is evidently so satisfying to my own kids (and admittedly most kids). Is it an aesthetic thing, like they see beauty in the chaos whereas I just see mess and work? Is this their way of taking a daily count of their items to ensure that everything is still there? Or are they experimenting with how red my face can get in a fit of anger after I see (or step/trip/fall on) toys everywhere but in the appropriate bin? I just don't know.

I try to have realistic expectations when it comes to their belongings. I don't want to them to feel that they can't play, explore, create, and use their imaginations when it comes to their toys. I just want them to clean up the Barbies, ponies, princesses, puzzle pieces, Disney Princess dolls, blocks, Diegos, and whatever else they pull out. I don't want to be met with sighs, tears, and dramatic wails of, "But I'm too tired to clean up! My muscles are sore! I can't possibly clean this all up by myself!" Am I being unreasonable here?

I've tried all of the tips from experts on getting kids to clean up toys. I've used sticker charts, sung songs, and made it a race to see who does it the fastest (I always win, no big surprise). I read one article that said to put on the appearance that I enjoy cleaning, which is crazy because I do enjoy cleaning. I mean, I literally whistle while I work, I smile, and happily soak in my effort when I'm done. In short, I love cleaning and I don't think I could make that any more apparent to my kids! Once we briefly took toys away when the girls didn't pick them up at the end of the day, but then the next day, while my husband was at work, I was inundated with whining and crying over the missing toys. That means I caved and gave them back. Great lesson I taught there, huh?

I realized last week that the problem is that my daughters have too much stuff, and trust me, that is painful to admit. I couldn't tell you the number of times I have rolled my eyes while listening to my mother on the phone say, "Those girls have everything! So many toys! They don't need anything!" I sigh impatiently and then quickly throw my sister under the bus to divert attention from me by pointing out that she spoils my nephew far more than I could ever spoil my kids. That usually does the trick as my mother then becomes a referee and gets distracted. But now, I have to come to see that my mother was right all along and boy, I will never hear the end of it.

It took some time and planning but eventually we whittled away the amount of toys our girls could have in the living room and their bedrooms. The rest was put in our rec room, on shelves they can't reach so they won't be tempted to sneak things back. I will force myself to rotate toys more while we have an have an agreement with the kiddos that if they want something on a shelf, we have to swap something for it. we're going to have Tidy Time three times a day with everything that isn't tidied up taken away for the remainder of the week. Ok, the latter part completely freaks me out because I know it will result in plenty of loud whining. I'm thinking about buying earplugs and my husband pats my back and says, "Stay strong, soldier!" Easy for him to say. Perhaps I should give him a call when the complaining commences so he can get a small earful of it.

Mission accomplished? Only time will tell.

~Michele

Getting to the roots

rubyslipperguide@gmail.com — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 16:14:00 GMT

One of my favorite hobbies lately is family tree making. Please don't be intimidated by my overt hipness. I know you are thinking, "Wow, she makes family trees? How could I ever be as cool and sophisticated as she is?" Well, you can't, because I am just that cool and sophisticated, and really, could anything be as cool as looking at 100 year old census documents and death certificates? I don't think so.

In truth, I do realize that family tree making is not exactly revolutionary and stylish. It is hard to imagine someone painfully fashionable like Lady Gaga trying to trace who her great-great-grand uncle was (Lord Gaga, perhaps?), but there is just something about it that I find fascinating. I have learned things like how I am related to Ulysses S. Grant, while my husband is related to Robert E. Lee- Lincoln would be happy to kno

Sick days

rubyslipperguide@gmail.com — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 22:01:00 GMT

Every now and then my husband and I will engage in a conversation that makes us wistful for days of yore. We speak longingly of a time before kids when we had freedom, when a good night of sleep was an absolute certainty and not a desperate plea to God or whoever out there in the universe might be listening. It was a time when we could go to a movie on a whim, or run errands in the late evening. It's almost sadistic that we even go there, knowing that we didn't fully appreciate those times or realize how good we had it. The next time we throw ourselves a pity party, I have a new item to add to that list: Sick days. Real, old-fashioned sick days.

Do you remember sick days before kids? The kind where you got to stay home from work and watch television all day while dozing on and off. No cares and no worries, just you, some juice, and Oprah. Come on, I know you remember. And remember how sometimes when you woke up in the morning, you'd think the idea of going to work was as appealing as a root canal so you'd call in sick and fake it just so you could stay home? Maybe you'd recorded an episode of 'The Real World' the night before and you just really wanted to watch it, as was usually the case for me. I think they were called "mental health days." Now, those were good times.

I've had a hearty helping of Memories of How Life Was Before Kids recently, which include sick days. I'm not going to point fingers, but it's my youngest daughter's fault. The child who won't share a toy to save her life generously shared her cold with me which then evolved into a sinus infection that would not go away. And it was during this time of illness that I realized I truly miss, among other things, sick days before I had kids.

Parents don't get sick days. We still have to take care of kids, errands, and housework. On the days when I'm truly too sick to move, I'll lay on the couch as my daughters climb over me, fight next to me, or whisper in my ear that one of our cats left a hairball in the hallway. Not exactly relaxing. If I cough or blow my nose, my daughters yell that I'm gross and run away or provide me with a lecture on how I need to use my elbow to catch the germs. Attempts to close my eyes result in the gentle tapping on my cheeks so that in my lifeless position I can stare blankly as my daughters systematically decorate our living room with every small toy they can find (knowing all the while that at some point it will be me cleaning the mess up). I may watch television but any attempt to watch something that interests me is soon disrupted by chants of "We want Max & Ruby! We want Dora!" In the end, I spend the afternoon watching Little Bill or Yo Gabba Gabba and feeling even more miserable (but having developed my intra- and interpersonal skills quite a bit). Is it any wonder I miss the sick days before 2005?

On the other hand, those old-fashioned sick days didn't provide me with warm little bodies to snuggle up with. I may have recuperated faster thanks to the uninterrupted rest, but I didn't have a "doctor" at my disposal as I do now to prescribe doses of much needed cookies to make me feel better. There wasn't anyone putting a tiny hand on my head and announcing, "Your four-year-old head feels hot." No one drew me pictures of princesses in a castle or sang me songs. When I think about it from that perspective, those old sick days were awfully lonely.

~Michele

Another one bites the dust

rubyslipperguide@gmail.com — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 04:15:00 GMT

I have a love/hate relationship with vacuum cleaners. Actually, let me clarify that. I have a "willing to acknowledge"/hate relationship. I am willing to acknowledge their usefulness, but it isn't like I get a lot of joy out of them. On the other hand, vacuums probably have a hate/hate relationship with me. Because I kill vacuum cleaners. We're talking smoke-and-sparks-and-fire kill. I am a vacuum destroying goddess.

It doesn't really make sense, though. I'm generally good with gadgets. And I once read that vacuum cleaners were the single most important factor in freeing women from traditional gender roles, so you would think I'd appreciate them more. (I have also read that it was birth control that freed women- I guess we are to assume that the modern woman is a sex fiend with sparkling

Kindergarten Krazies

rubyslipperguide@gmail.com — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 00:20:00 GMT

I am terrible at making decisions. I'm like a child: It's best to only offer me two choices and even then I can barely function. Even decisions like where to go on vacation, which should be fun and simple, involve me polling everyone from my closest friends to the mail carrier. Despite this, most of the big decisions I've had to make in my life were quite easy to make. Baby names, buying our home, choosing a college, that was no problem. I'm finding (unsurprisingly) the harder decisions involve outcomes that will have a significant impact on my children. Take education, for instance. When my oldest daughter started preschool two years ago, I was in turmoil for weeks. I agonized over where to apply and which school to accept, as if my daughter's life depended on where the best place for her to ingest paste would be. Once it was all said and done, and both my daughter and I were pleased with her school, I sat back with a sigh of relief. "At least I won't have to go through this with kindergarten!" I thought smugly. Looking back, I could smack my overconfident self.

Not long ago, friends began whispering about kindergarten.

"Can you believe he'll be in kindergarten next year?" I would hear in amazed tones. I would smile in understanding, since my own kiddo was about to join those ranks as well.

"We're looking into three or four schools. It's so hard to decide which one we want: Are we looking for a prep school that will pave the way to the Ivy Leagues, should we do a language immersion so he's bilingual, or stick with our neighborhood school?"

Huh? Didn't everyone just send their kids to their neighborhood schools? I mean, that's why they're put there, right? Nice and convenient! It seems to me when I was a kid my parents just sent me to the closest school and called it a day. I assumed that things were still that way and was surprised to hear so many friends and parents of my daughter's classmates telling me differently. Of course this put me into a tailspin and all I could think was: Am I doing this parenting thing completely wrong? Have I missed something? Thus began the Kindergarten Krazies, a period of time in which I went krazy for kindergarten.

First stop: Private schools! I began searching through schools I kept hearing on the lips of parents. I toured one. I fell in love with it. I envisioned both of my daughters there. I was happy. Then I saw the tuition. At first I thought it was a typo but no, it was not. 'Ok,' I thought. 'I'll sell my plasma (blood, not the tv - never the tv!). I can sell my eggs. I have an extra kidney that might be hot on the black market. We can totally swing this!' My husband, however, was not on board with the idea of throwing ourselves into such steep debt even if I was willing to let it literally cost me an arm and a leg. I wailed. I pleaded. I stomped my feet. I held up his children to his face and asked him to turn their futures down. He easily did so, our daughters not understanding nor caring, just wondering why their crazy mother was dangling them like kittens. He would not be swayed.

I admit I was despondent. I saw my hopes and dreams swirling down the drain. I felt like a failure as a parent for not taking this whole schooling thing more seriously. I should have been thinking about this when I was pregnant with my oldest, not waiting five years until it was too late. I kicked myself for once again being reactive instead of proactive.

How crazy is that, though? Feeling miserable because, woe is me, I have to send my children to our neighborhood school. The fact is, we Washingtonians (particularly those that live on the Eastside), are lucky when it comes to education. We actually have great school districts and have four high schools on the list of US News's Top 100 Best High Schools in America. When I thought about that, combined with a little research into my own neighborhood school, I felt lame for even panicking to begin with.

I'm not saying that there's something wrong with you if you choose to send your child to a private school. If that had been the right choice for my family (read: if I didn't need to look into selling my organs to pay tuition), then we would have gone that route. What I'm saying is that I wish I was more confident in my choices and not swayed by hearing other people's plans. I often worry that I take the easy way out when it comes to parenting because I don't look into every enrichment program and schooling option available. I honestly don't really think about it and when I hear other parents do, I panic. I bring a lot of unnecessary stress onto myself because of this. And the end result is almost always my initial plan anyway, just with a few extra gray hairs on my head because I'm neurotic.

The good thing is that I'm now breathing so much easier because the Kindergarten Krazies have passed. Except... I do have one more decision to make: Full day or half-day kindergarten? Looks like it's time to start polling everyone again! One of the clerks at the grocery store is pretty helpful, so I might start with her. You see? I never learn.

~Michele

Classic Blog: Butter Dish

rubyslipperguide@gmail.com — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 02:00:00 GMT

This afternoon, I walked in on my three year old in the dining room, with her face buried in the butter dish. I gasped when I saw this, alerting her to my presence. Slowly she lifted her head and looked at me warily. It was like a scene from a National Geographic special, only instead of a lioness interrupted from a meal of freshly caught gazelle, my daughter had eaten half a stick of butter and was busily gnawing teeth marks into the rest.

I struggled to figure out what I should do in this situation, since I don't remember seeing "butter, eating whole stick of" in any of my parenting manuals. But before I could get my head together, she gave me a big, buttery grin, and all I could do was laugh. The truth is, these kinds of moments, the ones that make wonderful stories, are the moments I have been waiting for since she was born.

Girl time

rubyslipperguide@gmail.com — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 22:42:00 GMT

As the mother of two girls, when I think of quality mother-daughter bonding time I often go the stereotypical, traditional route. I picture us shopping, watching chick flicks together, and sighing over dreamy Hollywood hunks. That leaves activities like coaching soccer teams, teaching the girls to drive, and showing them how to change a flat to my husband. I certainly never expected to bond with my girls over something like video games, which if I had to categorize by gender would most definitely be a father-daughter activity. But on a regular basis my husband comes home from work in the evening to find his wife and daughters bouncing on a couch, yelling at our television as we frantically play Mario Kart, and ignoring him until we have finished our races.

While visiting family in December, I was challenged to a game of Mario Kart by my 5 year-old nephew. Being that I'm a fairly competitive person (my husband all but refuses to play most board games with me because of what he calls "poor sportsmanship" on my part), I was a little uncertain as to how the race would go but figured it would be fine. He's 5, after all, and surely I could contain the urge to crush him as I raced to victory. I'm not a big video game player, but I do enjoy racing games since it lets me speed and crash without impacting my auto insurance rates or landing me in jail. I did not anticipate that my nephew would be good at Mario Kart. So good, in fact, that he gave me a sound beating all the while engaging in good old fashioned trash talk. I was not amused, though everyone else was. My older kiddo asked if she could race my nephew and I handed her the controller and stomped off. Who needed that dumb game?

It turns out, I did. I secretly enjoyed playing it and told my husband so. He's a big gamer, my husband, so it wasn't as though I had to beg, plead, and twist his arm to get him to buy Mario Kart. After the kids were in bed one night we excitedly turned on our Wii and got busy. Besides being competitive, I also tend to speak loudly and laugh like a hyena when I play so it wasn't long before the oldest child was calling to us from her room, wondering what we were doing. She's no fool. My husband said we were just watching tv but the next morning she demanded to know what had been going on. "I heard you, Mommy. What were you doing?" I explained that her daddy and I had been playing Mario Kart and then she said the magic words: "Can I play, too?"

Before I knew it, she and I became racing buddies. I (not always patiently) taught her how to use the controller, showed her little tricks, and helped her out when the roads got rough. I attempted to teach my younger kiddo the ropes of Mario Kart but she just drove her car in circles, which drove me nuts. We finally reached an agreement that allowed to her dance in circles around her sister and I as we raced, which she happily does.

Now Mario Kart is part of our daily routine. My kiddo will slide up to me quietly and ask, "When are we racing?" I will typically drop everything and we run to the couch, curl up side by side, and start playing. I've found that I don't mind coming in second to last (just
one spot ahead of her) and will even go slower to keep pace with her. I give my husband recaps of her racing style and brag about how she's no longer placing last all the time and is making her way up the scoreboard. I've been proud of her for many things in her four years, but being proud of her video game skills is not something I would have expected.

It's a silly activity but I wouldn't trade it for the world. At least not until she starts beating me. Then we'll have to find some other way to bond that's not as damaging to my ego.

~Michele

Tantrums, shmantrums

rubyslipperguide@gmail.com — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 03:42:00 GMT

Tantrums. You can't spell it without "um," as in, "Um, what the heck am I supposed to do about this tantrum?" You also can't spell it without "ant" or "tan," but that is pretty irrelevant here, so don't focus on that, ok?

Anyway, I had an "um-tantrum" moment a few weeks ago. I was in the grocery store with my four year old when I came into the dairy section and discovered another child of about two, face down on the floor, mid-tantrum. On a scale from one to demonic, it was a solidly mid-range tantrum: no limb-flailing or head spinning, and definitely no projectile vomiting, but there was

New Year, Old Me

rubyslipperguide@gmail.com — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 23:18:00 GMT

Ah, a new year. A fresh start. A clean slate. It's time for magazines, websites, and television programs to bombard us with information on how to better ourselves. We're overwhelmed with tips on how to lose weight, reorganize closets, shed emotional baggage, and fix whatever else is apparently so fundamentally wrong in our lives which we didn't even realize was there but that we now see so clearly has been holding us back. Yawn. For a new year, it feels so... old. Doesn't it? No matter. I get sucked in during the last days of December and early days of January when the fervor is at its peak. I can't escape it because frankly there is nowhere to hide from the New Year.

I may have skated through unscathed except I watched Julie & Julia a mere two days before New Year's Eve. Watching Julie improve her life by cooking her way through Julia Child's cookbook not only made me hungry, but it made me feel as though I too needed a year long project. There must be something out there that I could do that would enrich my life and allow me to force my personal journey on parents, in-laws, and friends with a blog! I just couldn't decide what that project would be. I considered trying to cook some French food as well, but when I flipped through Mastering the Art of French Cooking I realized I don't like most cheeses that don't come in individually wrapped slices, nor do I think my children would allow me the luxury of spending several hours a day whipping up a meal that no one in my house would eat. The ends didn't justify the means and I was tired simply thinking about the effort it would take to buy the ingredients, much less cook the damn meals.

Then I began reading The Happiness Project, based off a blog written by Gretchen Rubin that is about her year long project to increase her happiness. I'm not unhappy but neither was she; she just realized thatif she made some changes to her life she could be happier. Who doesn't want to be happier? I thought. I followed her advice: I organized closets and purged items no longer in use, I tackled a few nagging tasks that had been bothering me for quite some time, and I thought about exercising and getting more sleep. Then I realized this all sounded a lot like every other article out there about how to create a New You. Plus she takes on relationship improvement with the suggestion of a week of Extreme Niceness to your spouse. I adore my husband but it would scare him silly if I suddenly pasted a fake smile on my face and agreed to all of his whims and requests. He would most likely admit me into a psychiatric hospital, convinced I was experiencing a mental breakdown. It's not a bad book, but it wasn't helping me determine what my big project of 2010 would be.

I asked for help.

"You could collect coins," my husband suggested.

"I'd rather spend them," I replied.

"Stamps?" he said.

I sighed. "I would use them to pay credit card bills."

"We pay those online," he said. "You could not use credit cards for a year."

"That's been done. She went crazy. And why would we give up accruing points for a year?" I responded. He was no help.

I thought and thought. I was coming up with nothing. How do people like Julie Powell, Rubin, and AJ Jacobs come up with these year long projects? How does one even find the time? Between keeping house, managing daily life with my kids and husband, staying on task with freelance projects, making time to see my own friends, maintaining this website, and whatever else crops up unexpectedly, I'm pretty much swamped. It hit me that when I was ready for a big project, it would come to me naturally and I wouldn't have to force it upon myself. Whew! I thought. That's one thing I don't have to worry about.

I did, however, come up with some goals for the new year. I plan to cook two new meals per month (that my family will actually enjoy and do not include the deboning of a duck). I aim to laugh more, which means I will have to check out some of my favorite websites more often for a hearty chuckle (ever been to This Is Photo Bomb or FailBlog?). But overall, I plan to stay the same. If it ain't broke, why fix it?

Happy New Year to one and all!

~Michele