tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26902714136377546392024-02-07T06:12:04.966-05:00Sally G. AlexanderWife. Mom. Blogger. Chocolate addict.Best Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13065964759346952958noreply@blogger.comBlogger221125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2690271413637754639.post-42574845744535266312016-09-11T23:56:00.000-04:002016-09-12T15:12:43.455-04:00Dear Char-Gri-Ha-YOU!: An apology letter to my 4th kid<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Dear Char-Gri-Ha-DANGIT!<br />
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I guess I should start with saying that I'm sorry that I never call you by your actual name. I usually just shout out random syllables until I give up and yell at you to stop whatever it is that you're doing. To be fair, I call your siblings a bunch of random stuff, too, so maybe that one doesn't have anything to do with being the youngest. But there are some things that are totally different for you than for your brothers and sister. And I know they're there and I'm sorry. So, here goes. I am sorry for the following things...<br />
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<b><u>Your Medical Care</u></b><br />
I'm sorry that we are iffy on your medical care. On the plus side, we have never driven you 45 minutes to the world class children's hospital emergency room in the middle of the night because you were vomiting. Just throwing up. No other symptoms. That was your sister. After the hypochondriac phase of our first child, we swung way back the other direction and assumed we could handle anything. One of your older brothers has a permanent scar from that 2nd degree burn for which we did not seek medical attention, but should have. Oops. No, we're probably about the right level of emergency response with you, but I have no idea what any of your stats are. I don't know how much you weigh or how tall you are. Or what shoe size you wear. I don't remember which illnesses you've had or in what order. Sorry. I can probably look it up, but I don't know. Periodically I quiz myself about what you're wearing while I'm in the carpool line to pick you up and I'm never right. Which brings up my next topic.<br />
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<b><u>Your First Day of...</u></b><br />
I am not all that excited about preschool. I realize that this is your first time in Pre-K, but I've been here 4 times. Well, 5 if you count the time I, personally, was in preschool. Whereas I was totally excited to be the Mystery Reader for your sister (Oh, I'll get to see what her class is like!), I signed up for yours thinking, "I'll sign up early so I can get it over with." Oh, I'll actually love being in there and seeing you, but I'm also thinking, "You go to school for 12 hours a week. I need this one back." In fact, I posted a really cute first day of school picture of you, but it wasn't your first day. It was the second. Or third. I'm not sure, Daddy took that picture. I'm sorry. I love you and I'm proud of you, but I do not think everything with your fingerprint on it is adorable and I don't need ornaments with your picture on them. Speaking of pictures...<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_wybocKn_AKQ4vToa5sBgZQMKWYS2pDJ4bflnM48oxRRGbxmf4Ik9KyrcfEC7T10WC8v1LaCInq3yte0w4DZW_enn1pcz4YuW44nzresw8HRtzxfRarRXpyPIldwIqPlTtFf-MpyxXh22/s1600/CC5ED484-FC9C-4AB7-A675-DCAD192E2CAD.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_wybocKn_AKQ4vToa5sBgZQMKWYS2pDJ4bflnM48oxRRGbxmf4Ik9KyrcfEC7T10WC8v1LaCInq3yte0w4DZW_enn1pcz4YuW44nzresw8HRtzxfRarRXpyPIldwIqPlTtFf-MpyxXh22/s200/CC5ED484-FC9C-4AB7-A675-DCAD192E2CAD.JPG" width="193" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not the First Day of School</td></tr>
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<b><u>Evidence of Your Existence</u></b><br />
Daddy takes lots of pictures of you because you are adorable and hilarious. They are very rarely, however, the kind of thing a middle schooler would like to see of themselves in 7-9 years. They are frequently with your lovey, or under a blanket fort, or running away from us. I have almost no pictures of you because I am constantly catching you right before you careen off a cliff or into traffic and thus the pictures I could take fall by the wayside. I also don't even bother to get pictures where you are smiling or looking at the camera. We have thousands of pictures of 3 kids smiling and you off to the side somewhere doing whatever you felt like at the time. We just don't care anymore. We got a picture, all of you were in it, we move on. But your wedding rehearsal dinner video is going to be embarrassing because that's all we have.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzbXTQsuo8ZW4LuGxm72AAByDVUjP0Mqw_RmK2e6DM9MAVg_sYqAcoELApNEklvMPVx6dhiSsxreG179nZnjlm_dTODnDFsTl_z4gJN2oiyCn-egBxqdDNovMyaJ5HzEkKdZWTigCQ_xiq/s1600/IMG_0388.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzbXTQsuo8ZW4LuGxm72AAByDVUjP0Mqw_RmK2e6DM9MAVg_sYqAcoELApNEklvMPVx6dhiSsxreG179nZnjlm_dTODnDFsTl_z4gJN2oiyCn-egBxqdDNovMyaJ5HzEkKdZWTigCQ_xiq/s200/IMG_0388.JPG" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Only Kind of Pictures We Have of Your Face</td></tr>
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<b><u>Your Emotional Pain</u></b><br />
While we're talking about embarrassing things...I'm sorry we laugh at you every time you cry. Its just that you're the only one that's still a little bit of a baby and your crocodile tears are incredibly cute. Also, you cry for hilarious reasons. You wanted to drink your milk on the floor. You wanted your monkey to pick you up from school. You wanted anyone but your brother to hand you a plate. But you also cry because no one is listening to you and that's probably true and I'm sorry that we still think it's funny. I'm sorry.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEge_UdUzzZCm5W_P0a9rGb7lC_4Bkzvq_2x6MU8wLlnzSNzKFxOqiouVaHx1PJOfWkyqT5qpnWY52e3s55fRYwJOyhmFvEzeo0lxraHPWZCqyMfCdTQlWoGtqnn3Jav1zD-3E9OqXWOUYdn/s1600/IMG_0488.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEge_UdUzzZCm5W_P0a9rGb7lC_4Bkzvq_2x6MU8wLlnzSNzKFxOqiouVaHx1PJOfWkyqT5qpnWY52e3s55fRYwJOyhmFvEzeo0lxraHPWZCqyMfCdTQlWoGtqnn3Jav1zD-3E9OqXWOUYdn/s200/IMG_0488.JPG" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">You fell on the Appalachian Trail and got a bloody nose. You are crying, however, because I picked you up to comfort you. and you were offended. Hilarious. So I took a picture. Sorry. </td></tr>
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<b><u>TV and Movies You Watch</u></b><br />
I'm sorry that your little voice gets drowned out by bigger ones, especially when you pick TV shows. You have never seen <i>Sesame Street </i>or <i>Caillou</i>. When you discovered <i>Word World</i> existed you lit up in a way that made me really guilty that you've never actually watched an age-appropriate cartoon. You do have a pretty good vocabulary from <i>Martha Speaks</i> and you know a lot about animals from <i>Wild Kratts</i>, but you don't have any idea who Dora is. Sorry.<br />
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<b><u>Your Toys</u></b><br />
You don't have any age appropriate toys. I'm sorry. You have a bunch of brothers that you wrestle like a maniac, but I'm pretty sure you never had stacking rings or that popper thing you pull or blocks. You do know how to read and can name all the months of the year, but that seems to be primarily through osmosis while I gave you random "school work" to do while I taught your brother those things. If you one day really need that phone you can pull on a string, I'll get you one. I'm sorry.<br />
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<b><u>Your Tiny Legs</u></b><br />
We forget you are little. We went to Washington, D.C. during the Cherry Blossom Festival and we decided we didn't need a stroller. You were 2. We made you walk the whole Mall and when you finally fell asleep in the Museum of American History, I just carried you. We have never given you scheduled naps or let you ride when you could walk. I like to believe it will make you tough. It might, however, just make you have ridiculous expectations for your own kids one day. Sorry, future grandchildren.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzkNEj3YrAatEi4qvRss-NsNBlyxBBGpzdNnyOd2uwX2gAfPWw5ncnN70OjR1n1SX2AHNLX5wLSadQt5jnbIhEeg0kx_nKO-qmGvHX4KkZBkkwuvpuGCo2TMWR3mAtPFI9y1lP1uuD1dzE/s1600/FullSizeRender+%25285%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzkNEj3YrAatEi4qvRss-NsNBlyxBBGpzdNnyOd2uwX2gAfPWw5ncnN70OjR1n1SX2AHNLX5wLSadQt5jnbIhEeg0kx_nKO-qmGvHX4KkZBkkwuvpuGCo2TMWR3mAtPFI9y1lP1uuD1dzE/s200/FullSizeRender+%25285%2529.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The First Ladies' Dresses were Exhausting</td></tr>
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<b><u>Your Middle-Aged Parents</u></b><br />
I'm sorry that you get tired parents. We are a lot older than we were when we started this parenting thing...both in years and in miles. Oh, but we love you. My hardest thing with you is not spoiling you absolutely rotten due to your charm and laugh and smile and general adorable adorableness. Seriously, you're cute. So I'm sorry that I over-correct and yell at you and give you the mean Mommy voice because I'm raising you to be a responsible man and not a man-child who thinks that charm is a character trait. I'm sorry if that is not always clear.<br />
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I hope when you're a grown man you will be able to see past the forgetful Mommy and distracted Daddy to the parents who deeply love and cherish you. You asked me why God made you this week...and without hesitation I told you it was because God wanted another little boy with big brown eyes who loved life and made everyone around him smile. So you gave me one of your smiles...the one that lights up the world around you...and snuggled into my lap.<br />
<br />
You are my treasure and joy and I'm sorry when we forget to tell you. And I'm sorry that the only way I'll ever remember this is to write it down and put it on the internet. Feel free to ask my estate for therapy money. We probably left your oldest brother in charge of it. Sorry. </div>
Best Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13065964759346952958noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2690271413637754639.post-53397268525525319272016-08-03T18:02:00.000-04:002016-08-04T00:48:53.751-04:0010 Ways to Win at Parenting This School Year<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUQPmwkG1JmhB_Y7Q7rSe48va2D_IjA8ZXs0P5pcJOxieynBZtzfHBARfXF3dfU8p3eFnF6ezDtjds-yA5_D7tLPd4WtHMma8v3uN6QJQzC5oW82CtLXozYaQaoA45mxue3CbW7QzKufEg/s1600/back+to+school.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="149" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUQPmwkG1JmhB_Y7Q7rSe48va2D_IjA8ZXs0P5pcJOxieynBZtzfHBARfXF3dfU8p3eFnF6ezDtjds-yA5_D7tLPd4WtHMma8v3uN6QJQzC5oW82CtLXozYaQaoA45mxue3CbW7QzKufEg/s200/back+to+school.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
I’m kidding. I don’t have any actual tips to "Start the School Year Off Right", or "Make Mornings Your Family's Favorite Time of Day", or "Love Every Minute of Carpool."</div>
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To be honest, I actually have no freaking clue what
I’m doing. I’m wandering around blindfolded in a dark room filled with mostly
shin-high furniture and scattered Legos. Instead of beautifully
crafted memes filled with misty lakes and burgeoning sunrises, I have the
refrain “meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless” to offer. </div>
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OK,
that may be a bit bleak. I don’t actually think my parenting wisdom is
meaningless, but I do think it may or may not be useful and there’s really no
way I can be sure for at least, like, 40 years or so.<o:p></o:p></div>
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As we rocket toward another school year (that calendar by
which parents measure time far more closely than by the New Year), my social
media feeds are full of "10 Ways to Keep Your Kids Organized" and "13 Tricks
to Healthy Lunches all Year Long". And maybe they work. If you find a suggestion
or color coded calendar available for download that helps you out, <i>Brava</i>. I
hope it fulfills all of your #momgoals for the year. But I don’t live with your
kids in your house and you don’t live with my kids in mine so there’s really
only so much that either of us is going to be able to teach the other one about
how to do this parenting thing “right.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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You know who’d I take advice from? Some grandma with lovely grown
grandchildren who were raised by her well-adjusted, productive children. She,
however, is probably not writing a blog or posting carefully distressed signs
with messages of love on Pinterest because she has transcended the realm of
daily motherhood and no longer worries about such mundane things. She may also
not exist because no matter how great of a parent you are, our kids can all
decide to be drug addicts or shack up with a stripper named Glitter that they
met during that gap year we convinced our spouse to let them take. <o:p></o:p></div>
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All the best advice in the world, all of the best ways to do
this, or creative ways to do that may or may not be “best” in your life, or my
life, or—and this is terrifying—even for all of our own kids. What works with
one may or may not work for another. We really can’t tell in the middle of it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I, for instance, teach my kids random things through pop songs
written primarily before my birth.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Learning the seasons? —<a href="https://youtu.be/xEkIou3WFnM">“You’ve Got a Friend” James Taylor,1971</a><o:p></o:p></div>
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Having trouble with prepositions? –<a href="https://youtu.be/EPEqRMVnZNU">“Under the Boardwalk”The Drifters, 1964</a><o:p></o:p></div>
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Wondering if there is such a thing as a Space Cowboy? –<a href="https://youtu.be/FgDU17xqNXo">“TheJoker” Steve Miller Band, 1973</a><o:p></o:p></div>
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I send my kids to a pretty conservative private Christian
school where I have to say things like “I think dinosaurs died out 65 million
years ago no matter what your teacher said” and yet I also am explaining
phrases like “we’ll be makin’ love…under the boardwalk” and “I’m a midnight
toker” to my children. Fortunately, none of them asked about “I really love
your peaches, wanna shake your tree.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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What in the world am I doing?! Have I no sense of the middle
ground?!? We've got Creationism and stoner anthems at the same time??!! I am totally afraid that I am breaking them most of the time. That
they will turn out weird or ignorant or lost or lonely or afraid or….well, I don’t
even know what. The reality is that they will be one or all of those things at
some point. We all are. <o:p></o:p></div>
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One of my kids has spent the last year in therapies
attempting to address both physical and academic challenges that we can’t seem
to find a cause for. In our last meeting our pediatrician looked at me and
said, “This is a unique case for me.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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Well, damn. Is that unique like “that’s a unique smell” or
what? <o:p></o:p></div>
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He said, “unique in that most parents aren’t as involved or
knowledgeable about their children’s development and education as you are.
Honestly, most of them want me to just fix it so they can go back to playing
tennis.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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I suppose that’s a compliment (I took it that way because I
have an overinflated ego at times—not all the time, mind you—that might
actually be useful to my sense of accomplishment—just sometimes), but it was
also terrifying. I don’t want to have a unique case. I don’t want my kid to suffer
because maybe I’ve spent too much time thinking I know what to do or how to fix
it and I’ve just made it worse. Maybe I am blowing this whole parenting thing
to hell even in the one field I thought I may actually have had an advantage. Maybe I should have just gone to
play tennis. I’ve heard they have wine there.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Earlier today, my oldest was looking at her brand new binder
and said, “OOHHH, it says, ‘resists <i>taaares</i>.’
So the binder doesn’t tear on the inside.”
When I looked up she said, “I read it as ‘resists <i>teeers</i>’ and kept thinking, ‘how many people cry onto their binders’”?<o:p></o:p></div>
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Having taught AP World History to 10<sup>th</sup> graders in
a highly academically competitive environment, I’m pretty sure I could name
several kids who may have cried onto their binders. I also think that if you
could sell a binder that could resist tears, the kind that pour from your
children’s eyes and into their lives and hearts, Target would never be able to
keep that thing stocked. <o:p></o:p></div>
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But we would be wrong to buy it. Our <i>teeers </i>and <i>taaaares</i> and
hurts and heartaches and struggles and successes and even <i>false</i> successes are what make us
valuable human beings full of love and compassion and not fragile robots prone
to general jackassery. (That’s a word. I promise.) <o:p></o:p></div>
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I am probably breaking my kids. You are probably breaking
your kids. We are, probably, right this very minute, doing something that could
have been done with just a little bit more patience or grace or love or joy or
meaningful stares at one another. Although that sounds vaguely creepy. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Our parenting choices are far from meaningless, but they’re
not all paramount, either. I think it’s easier for us to focus on the logistics
and look for advice about discipline tickets or chore charts because that feels
like something we can DO, not something we have to be. </div>
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And that's the rub, isn't it? Really great parenting is when WE are full of peace and patience and kindness and love...not when we manage to do the back-to-school paperwork on time. This is both the most
important job we’ll ever do and also the one in which there will never be an
accurate year-end review until the job’s all over. Our only option is to go
hard for the duration in the hopes that we get something right. <o:p></o:p></div>
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So, what are my actual "10 Ways to Win at Parenting this
School Year?"<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"> </span></div>
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<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">Do your best—at whatever thing it seems to YOU
needs attention at the time.</span></li>
<li><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">Ignore all the other parents’ social media feeds.
They don’t have your kids.</span></li>
<li><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">Pray. This is actually 3-9. We’re all just
guessing at what our kids need, but God in heaven knows.</span></li>
<li><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">(AKA number 10) Do it all over again every day
for every year you get to be a parent. It’s the only totally exhausting job that you never want to end.</span></li>
</ol>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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I hope that all of our kids have meaningful years of growth
and maturity. I hope they learn and expand and rise. I hope they experience,
and recover from, tears of all kinds. And I hope we all remember to treasure it as much as humanly possible.
Happy Back to School.</div>
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Best Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13065964759346952958noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2690271413637754639.post-34984498665907370892016-07-10T15:55:00.003-04:002016-07-10T21:11:36.688-04:00The Most American Week Ever<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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It's been a rough week for America and if you don't know why, you need to read this more than most. Or, if not this, then almost anything other than your heavily curated Facebook feed. But I'll assume that you do know why, and that you, too, are hurt and angry and disoriented by the violence and pain in our nation over the last several days...or decades...or centuries, depending on your point of view.<br />
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I'll assume that, like me, you want a better America than the one you've seen on television or out your window, or through your own experiences. I'm going to, for the sake of this one-sided discussion, begin with the assumption that you are both proud to be an American and willing to make that mean something greater than it already does. It's a decently large set of assumptions, but I think we're all up to that challenge.<br />
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I've seen and heard multiple versions of the comment, "this isn't my America" or "what is this country coming to?" --not just in reference to this last week, but also during our incredibly weird election cycle and never-ending spate of mass shootings. But I actually think this week may be the most American week we've had in a long time.<br />
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The major news stories of this week have involved police shootings of minorities, a suicidal/homicidal soldier, mental illness, death of police officers, peaceful protest, arrest of protesters, and, as is increasingly common, the proliferation of guns. If we could throw in immigration (although <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/dallas-police-ambush/father-officer-slain-dallas-ambush-he-s-our-hero-n606586">one of the fallen Dallas officers</a> was, in fact, Mexican-American) and a privileged white guy getting away with campus rape we'd probably have the crux of every news story of the last year.<br />
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There is chaos and tension and blood. As disturbing as that is, it's not exactly new. From our violent beginnings in the Revolution to the Civil War that nearly broke America's back...from the gang riots of immigrant groups in New York to the violence of Bloody Kansas...from the Civil Rights Movement to border wars no matter where our border might have been at the time.., the pain and the violence and the continually readjusting to a new normal, a new people group, and a new way of doing our lives has always been present.<br />
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It is, in fact, the most amazingly beautiful thing about the American Experiment--that we can face the inevitable clashes that come with living in close proximity to those with whom we do not feel related and find some common ground to stand on anyway.<br />
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When I taught AP World History to 10th graders, one of the tasks they needed to learn was to answer Document Based Questions. They were given a set of historic documents and expected to draw conclusions about the time and place in which the document was made. To be honest, most of them were very bad at it, especially at first. They continually wanted to use the documents (ships' logs, photographs of pottery fragments, royal decrees) as they would an encyclopedia.<br />
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They wanted to believe what they could see in front of them was absolute fact.<br />
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Over time, and with a lot of practice, they learned to always, <i>always</i> look at the source first. Was that ship's log made by a captain for his own use or to hand over to his investors or boss? Was that pottery used by an everyday citizen or was that something only elites had access to? Did the king have the power to enforce that royal command or was it just for show? Who, what, when, where, why, and how--those interrogatives you learned if you ever took a journalism course--became the bedrock of understanding historical events.<br />
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In order to accurately assess what happened in any given moment, students had to put themselves in someone else's shoes...to imagine <i>their</i> motivations and experiences...<i>their</i> worldview and sphere of influence..instead of looking at it solely from the students' own points of view. Although not all students became equally proficient at this task, every single kid I ever taught about sourcing a document got better at it over time. Every single one. Every single time.<br />
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I wish I could lead courses for adults to teach this skill (because it is absolutely a skill) and use current news articles as our documents. There are kind, well-meaning people who are completely clueless when it comes to thinking about life outside of themselves. And our social media obsessed society makes it so much easier to look like an insensitive moron. These social issues--race relations, policing, mental illness--they don't lend themselves to 140 characters or a snap shot.<br />
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I understand the desire to say <i>some</i>thing, <i>any</i>thing, when there is pain...but your Insta-ready white family's pic at the beach in Seaside stating that you "stand with your African-American brothers and sisters" doesn't hit quite the right note. Find some actual humans with brown skin to stand next to when <i>they </i>need a friend, not when <i>you</i> need a "black friend."<br />
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If you commented that "perhaps some good will come from this" after the assassination of police officers, you clearly aren't related to any cops. Only victims, of any race, of any crime, of any profession, get to look for the silver lining. Bystanders should bring blankets and water and hugs and only say, "I'm sorry."<br />
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If, every time there's a mass shooting, you post that the problem isn't with guns, but crazy people <i>with </i>guns and we really just need to "fix" our mental health system, you just prove that you don't know anything about mental illness. I know about both guns <i>and</i> mental illness and only one of those things can be locked up in a safe.<br />
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If you post passive-aggressive messages about the "sanctity of the family" even if you don't ever actually <i>say</i> anything about gay people, your gay friends and relatives read between the lines even if you really didn't "mean it that way." Stop that.<br />
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If you post that you "support our troops" but don't bother to learn that Memorial Day and Veteran's Day are two different events (neither one of which is about active-duty soldiers), your thanks sounds kind of hollow. Same goes for complaining about your out-of-town husband on Facebook when you have a military spouse as a friend.<br />
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Social media is fun and interesting, but it is far more about blips of information than about relationships and understanding. Your one comment about a complex issue is never all you think and feel about the topic and you know it...let's all try to imagine what it might sound or look like to the people we love who might be listening. Save the other comments for face-to-face conversations.<br />
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If you want meaningful social media, go ahead and follow <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=deray+mckesson&ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Esearch">DeRay</a> <i>and</i> the <a href="https://twitter.com/DallasPD?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor">Dallas PD</a> <i>and</i> the <a href="https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor">White House</a> <i>and</i> <a href="https://twitter.com/MittRomney?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor">Mitt Romney</a> <i>and</i> <a href="http://www.itgetsbetter.org/">It Gets Better</a> <i>and</i> <a href="http://www.focusonthefamily.com/">Focus on the Family</a>. If you don't want political social media, that's cool, too. Stick to food and vacay pics and we can all keep following each other and looking at each others' kids.<br />
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But in real, actual life, this is my proposal: <br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><b style="background-color: white;">Find someone you're afraid of and love on them, without ever expecting anything in return. We owe it to our children to get this right.</b></span><br />
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Go to a police station and take some food at a random time. Cops work weird hours and they're hungry.<br />
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Ask a woman in a head scarf at the gym how her holidays have been. Can you imagine the dedication to fitness it takes to work out with your head covered?<br />
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Talk to a gay coworker about their kids. Gay people have kids sometimes and they love theirs just as much as you love yours.<br />
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Learn how to both pronounce AND spell the names of your neighbors from India. It may not sound "American", but that's o.k., you can do it.<br />
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Listen when your classmates and coworkers and friends from church with brown skin say you don't have any idea what it's like to be black in America. Because you don't. And I don't. But we can both learn a little bit more every day.<br />
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I'm going to be honest...if we do this right...if we do this well, it's gonna get real awkward. You might say something ignorant and feel dumb. You might mispronounce a holiday or misunderstand a comment. You might ramble like I do.<br />
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I'm still feeling stupid about the rant I went on about the treatment of the history of enslaved people at Mount Vernon---to African-American friends of Jay's I had never met before. (Uh, if you guys read this...sorry, y'all. My mouth works faster than my brain sometimes. Hope it wasn't weird.)<br />
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We're going to have to get over the strangeness and love each other anyway. And listen. And learn. And be generally uncomfortable. It won't kill us, but it might just save us.<br />
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I, like a lot of people who like both music with great beats and Revolutionary history (I'm assuming there's more than just me), have been singing the songs from the Broadway musical <a href="http://hamilton./">Hamilton.</a> It's amazing and you should listen to it right after this if you haven't already. There's one song with the refrain, "<a href="https://youtu.be/VK4Wk_8PbcI">when are these colonies gonna rise up</a>?" It's about actual, violent rebellion, but the story of Hamilton is also about rising beyond the violence to get to something better. One of <a href="http://www.linmanuel.com/">Lin-Manuel</a> Miranda's lines (as Alexander Hamilton) is "for the first time I'm thinkin' past tomorrow." It's about achieving freedom and equality and hope and opportunity without burning the house to the ground in the process. It's about change for the present in hope for the future.<br />
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Conflict in America is not new. When this many different groups of people live together it will never be "over," merely always evolving. But this IS America--to rise up, rise on, rise through. To forge better and truer, stronger and braver not in <i>spite</i> of, but <i>because</i> of our differences.<br />
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So sing along everybody, "when are these colonies gonna rise UP, rise UP?" We can do it together. </div>
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Best Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13065964759346952958noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2690271413637754639.post-43636004715898240562016-04-10T17:20:00.000-04:002016-04-10T19:18:38.688-04:00What It's Like to Travel with Four Kids<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The short answer: It is amazing. In every possible way one can be amazed. By joy, by discovery, by time spent together; by sunsets and nature and adventure. And also by whining and chaos and uber-closeness and vomit. Really, truly, amazing.<br />
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Last year we embarked on a <a href="http://imthebestmom.com/2015/03/our-crazy-move-to-smaller-crappier-house.html">new life journey</a> that we are still <a href="http://imthebestmom.com/2015/04/so-i-started-homeschooling-my-kids-sort.html">exploring and figuring out</a> and touching tenderly like when you have a sore spot in your mouth you keep poking with your tongue. Part of that journey is a family mission to spend the night in <a href="http://imthebestmom.com/2015/03/our-50-nifty-united-states-adventure.html">all 50 states</a>. These are our own arbitrary rules, but all 6 of us have to spend the night and do something iconic for the state to count. So, my layover in Minneapolis does not count as having been to Minnesota. That time I drove a snowmobile on a frozen river in Alaska counts for me, but not the whole family. When the whole family camped in one 4-man tent in Yellowstone and managed to suffocate a small rodent under our tent at night, that felt like we pretty much covered Wyoming. You get the idea.<br />
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In the last little-more-than-a-year (we started in February, 2015), we've been to 35 states including Georgia. And it really has been amazing. I get a lot of questions about how we "do that with four kids," but honestly, I do everything with four kids so you just kind of get used to it. <br />
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I know what people mean, though. They want to know what it's like to schlep through the airport or ride in the car for hours every day or to be in a new hotel every night. They want to know how we keep that many personalities happy and relaxed on vacation (we don't, so don't expect that miracle piece of information). They want to know if it's something they might be able to do (or want to do) with their own kids. So, here's what it's been like so far. I'll let you know what it's like again after we get those last 15.<br />
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<b><u>Really Inconvenient</u></b><br />
Everything about having children is crazily inconvenient. It takes for-freaking-ever to get in and out of cars. And in and out of hotels. And in and out of restaurants. If we fly, we travel with car seats that we take through security and onto the airplane. People sometimes groan out loud when they see us coming. Strangers will comment on our children--sometimes with "you're doing such a good job with them" (usually from old people) and sometimes "are they ALL yours?" (usually from anyone else).<br />
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Kids get hungry and tired and irrational and don't always get the significance of what they're doing.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirpvzUmYfJSb0WkDXptxyz_Sa6vn_UxXChPFnRQCP9uA0YOavbgUgiYwlO8gSgO03yfKXy5D7yKf3zvU-OPV_lYWDqkutoIm9AyqIcxKRzLrRHes3Rvyz_VQFQm0T98XpATZZ60wCwvUmp/s1600/IMG_0035.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirpvzUmYfJSb0WkDXptxyz_Sa6vn_UxXChPFnRQCP9uA0YOavbgUgiYwlO8gSgO03yfKXy5D7yKf3zvU-OPV_lYWDqkutoIm9AyqIcxKRzLrRHes3Rvyz_VQFQm0T98XpATZZ60wCwvUmp/s320/IMG_0035.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. See how thrilled the kid on the left is?</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirR8SMvVqh4Vs8TFsCUT3fXnCAAZSjEhVO4KzP381BF2AGJm24EvnnKyM_W1wJCYm9KsGYXtZdgSrOa7vE6i9kV9w88SNL1BwD6BhfPdII_yXVp6ppU8pu5GQipyW0u9-Z5NaL-UYWnaPC/s1600/IMG_0318.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirR8SMvVqh4Vs8TFsCUT3fXnCAAZSjEhVO4KzP381BF2AGJm24EvnnKyM_W1wJCYm9KsGYXtZdgSrOa7vE6i9kV9w88SNL1BwD6BhfPdII_yXVp6ppU8pu5GQipyW0u9-Z5NaL-UYWnaPC/s320/IMG_0318.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Where the Wright Brothers Invented Flight. Nailed the family photo. </td></tr>
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It is totally inconvenient to schedule and go and shake up anything about the systems in place to function that we have at home. We go anyway. With children who are at times irritable and ungrateful and grumpy--because we are a family team and life wasn't going to be much more convenient at home anyway.<br />
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<b><u>Unpredictable</u></b><br />
Travel is kind of unpredictable no matter who you take with you. Hotels are not always as great as they seemed online. The new town you're in may not have anything your kids like to eat. We never know when someone might melt down, need to go potty, decide they're having a terrible time, or just plain rebel against an activity. There's more crying in the airport than when we go places without kids. There're a lot more bathroom stops. We also don't know where we're going a lot of the time and that makes the whole thing unpredictable.<br />
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Instead of being a negative, though, I think it's good for the kids. They see us have to make decisions based on new information and new problems. We've changed hotel rooms while driving down the freeway because we realized we could get further than we thought and we'd rather drive less tomorrow. We've had to use real, actual maps because cell service doesn't work everywhere in the nation (especially near national parks).<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqc-SoGfT7FOa2czAHzPWaq71EaEB1w8gJUhJC2NS8ZFN9rm6lfOtHyThmDmiS_kKweLnA2jb2Ig7xuQJYa1wZlPGjaVM6ledVSY4kEtz7yIPS2OUporj-JvHy2lJdaqk5EcQgncprMHGW/s1600/IMG_0377.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqc-SoGfT7FOa2czAHzPWaq71EaEB1w8gJUhJC2NS8ZFN9rm6lfOtHyThmDmiS_kKweLnA2jb2Ig7xuQJYa1wZlPGjaVM6ledVSY4kEtz7yIPS2OUporj-JvHy2lJdaqk5EcQgncprMHGW/s320/IMG_0377.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Actual map of Montana--see how there's no blue dot for my car?</td></tr>
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Life is unpredictable and this is a pretty fun way to practice making decisions on the fly and negotiating with loved ones and communicating when we're tired and hungry and stressed. Jay and I get frustrated, but we're stuck in the car or the hotel and the kids get to see us work it out without ruining the day.<br />
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<b><u>Gross</u></b><br />
Children are disgusting. For that reason I travel with an elephant's worth of Wet Ones and hand sanitizer. This is so ingrained in my daughter that she pulled hand sanitizer out of her purse at church today when they got a snack. We've had vomit in the car more than once (different kids, different trips) and diarrhea in the car once. That was not good. We have had children with enough sand to start building a hurricane barrier in their shorts and a flight to catch in an hour (poor parent decision making there--and also why I wound up in an outdoor shower with a Russian man and a naked toddler). We have had loveys left in horrible places, rubbed all over hotel room floors, and then kissed profusely when they were found. Seriously. Super gross.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Aah-Aah the Monkey was found in the parking lot of The Big Texan Steak House (home of the 72oz steak) underneath two guys smoking in the parking lot in Amarillo, Texas. At least as gross as it sounds.</td></tr>
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<b><u>Embarrassing/Conspicuous</u></b><br />
We do not enter any location unnoticed. We take up the entire escalator at the airport. And the entire elevator in hotels. We are not quiet. We are not stealthy. We were asked to leave the tour at Independence Hall, laughed at (good-naturedly) by retirees in line at the National History Museum in D.C., and directly addressed by TSA agents in Atlanta, Seattle, and LA. So many people comment on our four kids (it's not like it's 40, people) that I don't even notice it most of the time anymore. A Japanese man and I had a conversation in broken English outside Yellowstone Lodge about how I did, in fact, give birth to them myself. Mostly I find this hilarious, but it certainly takes more bravado than I expected.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">What we take on an airplane. Not subtle.</td></tr>
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Sometimes it's our own fault. It was really funny to have an Elvis wedding (actually a vow renewal--we have been married for quite a while) in Vegas. I did not, however, anticipate how much courage it took to walk through the lobby of Paris Las Vegas wearing my veil and followed by the children. I was told congratulations, so that was nice. But definitely not low key.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoYBdLJsP-DyvUTlW55gh_A7EUHP1aq1Yyz1fr4YTFpPORp8Ci9h2cnuGZ4ETJMQkRB6CZtD3uVEuA730o-5A2R6jai2CEIzM5uOFaWRUOcaObVNwjlFv6w9yr6IdW3tMi5vq5p_yKEHb9/s1600/IMG_0616.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoYBdLJsP-DyvUTlW55gh_A7EUHP1aq1Yyz1fr4YTFpPORp8Ci9h2cnuGZ4ETJMQkRB6CZtD3uVEuA730o-5A2R6jai2CEIzM5uOFaWRUOcaObVNwjlFv6w9yr6IdW3tMi5vq5p_yKEHb9/s320/IMG_0616.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Headed to our Vegas wedding in a rented KIA minivan. It smelled better than our own minivan, so that was luxurious. </td></tr>
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<b><u>Terrifying</u></b><br />
Sometimes, where we go is just plain terrifying. There's a fence at the Grand Canyon, but it's made out of chain link like the one we had that couldn't keep our dog in when I was growing up. And there are gaps. Giant, child-sized gaps. The Tidal Basin in DC has no rail or fence and it was really crowded with wall to wall people down to the very edge. Crater Lake had a thin guide wire strung between two trees that was the difference between standing on actual rock and standing on snow cornices. The ranger there said, "Be careful here because it slopes downward before the rope. If you start sliding, you will die."<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View from Hoover Dam. See how we did NOT get the kids in this shot?</td></tr>
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New Orleans has lovely trolleys, but they are located in the middle of the street so there's about a 5 foot gap between child-killing traffic and child-killing trolleys. We've driven on roads that had us white knuckling the steering wheel and drugging the children with iPads to ensure silence. Hoover Dam...yeah, both sides of that were horrifying. So, it's frightening. And I kind of like that.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJXKvQ5pBDzIPmDwTxELyKl-YhK-4DqywcwMHOeh2pwFonixI3l24MkxnH9K9OLCim0SGijVUxQKgLJwe7075YNbse0pEv-p3z2JTL8P9zjMipnx5B8NUro16eo7RK3MjJoJjv8rjQgG7v/s1600/IMG_0322.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJXKvQ5pBDzIPmDwTxELyKl-YhK-4DqywcwMHOeh2pwFonixI3l24MkxnH9K9OLCim0SGijVUxQKgLJwe7075YNbse0pEv-p3z2JTL8P9zjMipnx5B8NUro16eo7RK3MjJoJjv8rjQgG7v/s320/IMG_0322.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Walkways with absolutely no rails over the geothermal features in Yellowstone. Some also have water in them, not just earth fire.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<b><u>Educational</u></b><br />
Sure it is educational in the actual history way. We've learned a crazy amount about Lewis and Clark and the Civil Rights Movement and the American Revolution. We've learned about Westward Expansion and Pilgrims and the Civil War. But we've also learned how other people live and how big our country is and how much of it still doesn't have people in it. And yet, at the same time, how many other people there are living lives parallel to our own thousands of miles away.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEDBbgewnksL4Z4hhQ2hlcuKXAUXHvkFL2TeuStU2wfwOu9yQwoVCiYcK2tiurK1nIweaevDqRPT6efzGNtOd8dtQt-lRE9-dtpHKmKvdgVec28onshayQ7iYGeA5eoMeYrjcVxMwCZ8s1/s1600/IMG_0182.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEDBbgewnksL4Z4hhQ2hlcuKXAUXHvkFL2TeuStU2wfwOu9yQwoVCiYcK2tiurK1nIweaevDqRPT6efzGNtOd8dtQt-lRE9-dtpHKmKvdgVec28onshayQ7iYGeA5eoMeYrjcVxMwCZ8s1/s320/IMG_0182.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fort Sumter, where the Civil War began. Our kids are wearing gloves (that they would lose five minutes later) because it was the one day in Charleston that it got cold. Also, can you see the 4th kid? Another perfect pic. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
We learn about each other and what we find interesting. We learn our children's personalities in new and unusual circumstances. We learn how to communicate with each other better because there's no where to escape and the children can always hear us. We learn how to entertain ourselves for hours on end of driving and staring out of the window. We learn...and for my teacher soul that is so very satisfying.<br />
<br />
<b><u>Very, Very Precious</u></b><br />
For all the embarrassment and inconvenience and uncertainty and vomit, I am so very glad we are on this silly mission. It is so much fun. Life itself is one very big adventure filled with all of these qualities--what an amazing way to get to teach our kids how to roll with it. What an amazing series of moments to share. This past week we took another rented KIA minivan 3 miles down a dirt road off a crazy curvy highway in California to find a stand of redwood trees. We were the only people there when we arrived--it was about 5pm and getting dark and misty. The sunlight filtered through the giant trees and the rain chilled us a little and the only sounds were our kids (of course) and the nearby river. We found a spot where giant logs lay in a semi-circle underneath towering trees and I could not help but think that it looked like the kind of church that God himself had made. So we made our own family circle and prayed in that sacred place...thanking God for the sky and the trees and the river and the rain and the chance to see them all together.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfi1siyGuY2cyae02-59V8-_VVwrIOAk5SQPygA-BfAreIlPkq3Tl3dqKuBmqhAGGOGyx80CjBgMx_Dul716SCzCEQZgISyJNyMCyIsjeOfRmi3KqBOW94hBSZ9SJXFrBaW3e8_MEwV5nH/s1600/IMG_0742.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfi1siyGuY2cyae02-59V8-_VVwrIOAk5SQPygA-BfAreIlPkq3Tl3dqKuBmqhAGGOGyx80CjBgMx_Dul716SCzCEQZgISyJNyMCyIsjeOfRmi3KqBOW94hBSZ9SJXFrBaW3e8_MEwV5nH/s320/IMG_0742.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Boys and a giant tree. KIA minivans can go anywhere.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
This is why now, with my jet-lagged children irritable and grumpy and picking at each other after the let-down of home again and back to routine, I'm already planning the next trip. No matter what happens on our trips, what lives up to our dreams and what doesn't, it was always absolutely worth it because we are on the adventure together. I can't wait to see what the next one brings.<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Best Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13065964759346952958noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2690271413637754639.post-51364727298455542342016-03-29T10:25:00.002-04:002016-03-29T10:25:13.385-04:00Why I Have Hot Pink Hair<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
So, in case you haven't noticed from Facebook or Instagram or my picture on this page, I am currently rocking a very unnatural hair color. It's hot pink. In darker light it looks kind of a crazy red, but in the sun, it is full blown hot pink.<br />
<br />
And I love it. I feel like a super hero. I feel like I am so much cooler than my minivan driving self has a right to be.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTCbjqAUmvujofxHXD1DvR5xAPcvKJa1Co51O2CnpeEuNWA6lpzcl52Vo7Mm52C2c9otpqL7hEFRv_A4yer0ZeOM773kIAcf9FNFBpQcIV9QZmMahOIB-zF4dpklKaEhRvvRLPuuB5HY_E/s1600/IMG_1061.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTCbjqAUmvujofxHXD1DvR5xAPcvKJa1Co51O2CnpeEuNWA6lpzcl52Vo7Mm52C2c9otpqL7hEFRv_A4yer0ZeOM773kIAcf9FNFBpQcIV9QZmMahOIB-zF4dpklKaEhRvvRLPuuB5HY_E/s320/IMG_1061.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sweaty pinky-red hair is awesome</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
I am somehow more approachable to random strangers. I've been shown the new rib cage tattoo of a female med student in the middle of a Starbucks. I've had total strangers yell at me across a parking lot that they like my hair. The women at Ulta, and Sally's, and the MAC counter treated me like one of them. When I asked for a fun new lip color for spring, she brought out PURPLE lipstick. Purple! If your job involves wearing a black smock for a living, we would probably make an instant connection if we met.<br />
<br />
I make eye contact and share smiles with a different group of people than before. Not just the moms wrangling children in the Target, but also 20-somethings and maintenance workers and the white girl with dreadlocks at my church. We apparently share the bond of people who feel slightly off inside.<br />
<br />
The reactions I've gotten from people who actually know me have also been enlightening. "I wish I could do that," "I wish I could get away with that," and my favorite (spoken by a beautiful and graceful homeschooling mom) "I wish I had the balls to do that" have been the most common. There have also been people who have not mentioned it AT ALL. People I see at least once or twice a week who have made absolutely no mention of the fact that my head now kind of glows in the light. Can they not see it? Are they practicing the Southern proverb "If you can't say anything nice...?" I suppose that's better than the fair amount of "look at your hair!" (not a compliment), "wow, that's different" (also not a compliment), and "THAT'S a big change" (still not a compliment).<br />
<br />
Almost everyone asks me what prompted me to dye it all. And I haven't given any great answers. I've always wanted to (true), I'm probably having a midlife crisis (possible), I just felt like it (weak, but technically true). The real answer is a little bit long and a little bit dramatic and a little bit because I'm getting older.<br />
<br />
When I was in my early 20s I had very long, very dark brown hair. And, although I loved the drama of short hair and bright hair I just didn't have the courage to change it. There's a special sense of self-consciousness that comes with your 20s that you really regret in your 30s. Anyway, I found myself thinking "if I had nothing to lose I'd cut all my hair off and dye it red." Over the next couple of years I saw a loved one lose her hair to cancer. A few months after she eventually lost her life I found myself thinking about cutting my hair again and realized that I actually have a lot less to lose than I thought. Some fleeting sense of attractiveness? The ability to blend in better with a crowd? I don't know what I was afraid of losing, but I was suddenly aware that I might not get as much time or hair as I originally thought I would.<br />
<br />
After that first radical change it was easier every time I've cut it all off or dyed it blond or red or purply brown. It's been super short and pretty darn long and everything in between. There have been cuts I did not like. But it's hair so it grows and people forget if you looked weird for a few weeks.<br />
<br />
So why now and why so bright? Well, I am getting older. I will be 40 this summer and I certainly feel that crunch of time and the fear that my best years may be over and the worry that I will be less and less interesting from here on out. But that's not the main reason.<br />
<br />
Over the last year I've really struggled with feeling less-than. I don't have a job, or an amazingly Pinterest-worthy house, or a side business that (according to what I see on Facebook) I'm apparently supposed to have. I have <a href="http://imthebestmom.com/2016_01_01_archive.html">gained weight</a> and not worked out. I've made some <a href="http://imthebestmom.com/2015/03/our-crazy-move-to-smaller-crappier-house.html">big life changes</a>, but been really uncertain about why exactly or what benefit they may have.<br />
<br />
And I've been hiding.<br />
<br />
Hiding in my baggy clothes because my others don't fit. Hiding in gym clothes because, really, why should I actually get ready everyday? Hiding by letting my striking pixie of two-plus years ago when I felt strong and brave grow into a nondescript shaggy mess. Hiding by refusing to write anything about any of this because I just wanted to sit on my couch and watch TV and eat chocolate in the quiet and not deal with my feelings.<br />
<br />
So I decided I was done hiding. I don't want to keep the extra weight I'm carrying or the fear I'm holding onto or the self pity I've wrapped around me like a puffy coat. A puffy coat made of my jiggly stomach.<br />
<br />
I was explaining this to my friend Erin who, conveniently, used to own her own hair salon. I casually asked if she thought I could pull off pink hair. She enthusiastically said yes. She also spent two years of her life with a buzzed head that she bleached every three weeks so I probably should have seen that coming.<br />
<br />
When I told Erin that I thought it might just be a midlife crisis I said, "if I get 40 more years, 80-year-old me will enjoy this memory. And if I don't..." and just kind of trailed off. Erin finished the sentence for me with "And if you <i>don't</i> get 40 more years and you <i>don't</i> dye your hair your epitaph can just say 'she lived a short life with brown hair.'" Which is hilarious and also clearly made me want to go ahead with it.<br />
<br />
So I did. Erin did all the leg work and make cookies and brought out toys to entertain my kids which eliminated the bulk of the expense and inconvenience. And I got to just chat with her for 4 hours so that was also a plus.<br />
<br />
And I am definitely no longer hiding. I feel brave again. Terrified, but brave enough to move forward anyway--with writing and actually losing this weight and just generally walking around knowing that I am not imagining it and that people are actually talking about me when I walk by. As my friend Allison said, "at least you know what they're saying."<br />
<br />
I don't have any idea how long I'll keep up my pink hair. It does take maintenance and I have a towel that will never be the same. I also drip pink sweat at the gym, but I'm choosing to call that fabulous instead of horrifyingly gross. I do know that I certainly don't regret it. Maybe I am kidding myself by thinking that I'm young enough to pull this off, but who cares? It's fun and ridiculous and makes me smile. Also, my daughter gazes at me adoringly and says things like, "It's just so PINK!" which is a grand compliment in her world.<br />
<br />
You should do this. Maybe not pink hair, but whatever that thing is that you've thought "if I had nothing to lose, I'd..." You really don't have anything to lose that you're going to get to keep long term anyway. And maybe you'll get to feel like a superhero, too, and then we can roam around the world saving it all together. With or without pink hair. </div>
Best Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13065964759346952958noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2690271413637754639.post-10467641877916467802016-03-23T12:49:00.001-04:002016-03-29T09:21:39.133-04:00Grow, Little Bloom, Grow<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgajMYW1IR7Gntgi9fJWlZWnzggpi2IjnzZud0pKN-YwHRKYftT4F8OYPDbIFhedQVS0cqaKTG7SgH3fmRrgSmNZAiH-zq5e8nPKtjXWUiuS7czVeAfDb3RbiLK_3hOT2Dtu1kh15JwMCdU/s1600/FullSizeRender+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgajMYW1IR7Gntgi9fJWlZWnzggpi2IjnzZud0pKN-YwHRKYftT4F8OYPDbIFhedQVS0cqaKTG7SgH3fmRrgSmNZAiH-zq5e8nPKtjXWUiuS7czVeAfDb3RbiLK_3hOT2Dtu1kh15JwMCdU/s320/FullSizeRender+%25282%2529.jpg" width="239" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Such a Perfect Tulip in my Front Yard</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I kill things a lot. Not like, animal things, but pretty much all plant things. I have two large peace lilies that I have managed to keep alive for about a decade, but they mostly survive on the force of my guilt. One was a gift at my grandfather's funeral and the other was from the funeral of his sister, so every time they start turning brown and scraggly I water them... because how terrible would I be if I let my dead relatives' funeral plants die? Have I no soul? Fortunately peace lilies are incredibly resilient so this plan is keeping them pitifully alive...so far.<br />
<br />
But, basically, without strong guilt motivations I will just let stuff die. Because I am tired and moving seems too hard. Because I am poor at planning things ahead of time and "gardening" is not on my list even when I do make a plan. Because I am lazy. It is apparently not much of a priority so I don't create time for it in my life. It feels wrong, though...<br />
<br />
Some part of me, perhaps the part that loved visiting my grandparents' farms as a kid, really wants to <i>grow</i> something. Both of my sisters-in-law are actually quite good at this despite their busy lives and little children and more than average levels of responsibility. They grow things to eat and lovely things to look at and I definitely do not.<br />
<br />
The other day my brother's wife offered me extra seeds she will have after her first spring planting in their new house. I told her I would happily accept the seeds, but that I had no idea what I was doing. She said, "First rule of gardening: if it grows, take the compliments. If it doesn't, blame the weather."<br />
<br />
I thought of this wise advice when I pulled into my driveway today and saw this:<br />
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuZ-0JTM1KcE9ctuuydHjV2xvha1gO5TW450jNXhcHeZkn2hKnGiP2RyMEggmnVX0AfX6_-GmCim5lic8lF5fljndPEa2xSEP5ZIwEmda_4_bbgw3hJzYCoovMzj6j6gq32QHh3A7p6-BC/s1600/FullSizeRender+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuZ-0JTM1KcE9ctuuydHjV2xvha1gO5TW450jNXhcHeZkn2hKnGiP2RyMEggmnVX0AfX6_-GmCim5lic8lF5fljndPEa2xSEP5ZIwEmda_4_bbgw3hJzYCoovMzj6j6gq32QHh3A7p6-BC/s320/FullSizeRender+%25281%2529.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mailbox Joy</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Tucked around my mailbox are 80 or so tulip bulbs that my sweet relative game me for Christmas. She and my niece snuck over to my house last fall and planted them while I was out of the house for the day. On Christmas, I opened an adorable picture of my 5-year-old niece posing with her handiwork and the information that, although they couldn't guarantee anything would grow, they promised that they worked hard to plant something.<br />
<br />
Earlier this week I was writing something else (I'm working on a book even though I'm terrified that it will turn out that I've spent months and months of my life working on the world's least interesting pamphlet) and I was pondering the idea of investment in others.<br />
<br />
None of us are going to live forever (depressing thought for the day) and the only thing of real value that we leave behind will be our impact on other people. And that impact, whatever it may be, is never the result of just one moment. There are days and weeks and months and years of words and touches and acts of kindness that go into forming how we influence those around us.<br />
<br />
Right this minute, I am writing with little feet in my lap. As I sit here, snuggling a sick boy and his monkey, it is hard to imagine that this act will have a lasting impact on him. By itself, it probably wouldn't. But if I add up the sick snuggles and the words I speak and the moments I offer him attention, they become not just a series of moments, but rather something alarmingly momentous to his life.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZwSOID4qrM0p0QVbfi4hOWK1Nv5foF9E4qDI-2a7jA74AKaqcZiNtIBCIqMUJ2R5ga6JnIGiy6GdCRoOm_Wj1-GePdYBeFojB-XYAnp7oODLUo-ljwK9MacA8o0F5jht0RNxmGeDsjhv4/s1600/FullSizeRender+%25283%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZwSOID4qrM0p0QVbfi4hOWK1Nv5foF9E4qDI-2a7jA74AKaqcZiNtIBCIqMUJ2R5ga6JnIGiy6GdCRoOm_Wj1-GePdYBeFojB-XYAnp7oODLUo-ljwK9MacA8o0F5jht0RNxmGeDsjhv4/s320/FullSizeRender+%25283%2529.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Boy and His Monkey</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Our relationships, like the lovely tulips planted by the sister-of-my-heart, need those first acts. They need us to dig and plant and cover with care in the hopes that something will bloom. Even if we have no idea if anything will come of it. Even though we cannot predict the weather in which our efforts will get the chance to grow.<br />
<br />
Our children need us to think that way. So do our parents, siblings (both biological and by marriage), our friends, and spouses. What relationships have we forgotten to plant? Where have we been watering just enough to keep it from dying like my peace lilies and where have we just let it die (like every other green thing I plant).<br />
<br />
I am so grateful for people in my life who have bothered to plant things in me and for me out of love and grace. I am a better person than I could ever be without them. Let me plant things that grow.</div>
Best Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13065964759346952958noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2690271413637754639.post-65005976697472193622016-03-16T11:33:00.004-04:002016-03-16T11:34:28.411-04:00I Have Pretty Hands (a compliment of motherhood)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I have four kids.<br />
<br />
Sometimes I'll be doing something like reading the newspaper or running errands and I'll remember...as though I've forgotten... that I am the Mommy.<br />
<br />
It's surprising and ridiculous and somehow inconceivable...how did I become the responsible adult in the lives of FOUR human beings? Clearly someone in charge has made a terrible mistake.<br />
<br />
The first moment that Jay and I were left alone with our oldest child, she stopped breathing. She turned grayish blue and the nurse came running and we were terrified. And then they made us leave with her 36 hours later. To take home. To our house by ourselves where we mostly ate dinner on the floor while watching Seinfeld reruns and staying up crazy late binge watching DVDs of 24 (no Netflix yet).<br />
<br />
I cannot POSSIBLY be the Mommy. I have pink hair.<br />
<br />
But I AM the Mommy. And the Mom. And the Mama. I'm the finder of school pants and the re-builder of Lego sets. I'm the healer of cuts and scrapes and hurt feelings. I am the soft place to land and the watcher of countless "amazing" dance moves.<br />
<br />
I am also the cleaner of pee soaked sheets, the nurse to vomiting children, and the wiper of behinds with diarrhea. Motherhood is a mixed bag.<br />
<br />
A few weeks ago, my three year old lost his mind at bath time. I don't know if you are aware, but three-year-old children are clinically insane. They lull you into this false sense of security because they are adorable and squishy and can form intelligent sentences and then BAM! they go nuts because you cut their sandwich wrong.<br />
<br />
Or they lose all sense of significance over small events. "I wanted to take the wrapper off the straw by myself" becomes a wail of pain as though flesh were being flayed from his body. It is not appropriate to flail about on the floor because you had to wear a green shirt instead of a purple shirt because you peed on the blue shirt. I don't really care if you even wear a shirt at all.<br />
<br />
Anyway, he pitched a fit because it was bath time and then he pitched a fit because I made him get out of the bath and we wound up sitting on the floor in his room while I wrestled him into underwear and pajamas and he got so red he turned purple and had great big fat alligator tears rolling down his face.<br />
<br />
Because this is my fourth kid, I found it hilarious. In the beginning, I would have been worried that there was something wrong with him. As a new parent to a three-year-old I would have looked for deeper meaning to his disobedience and inability to control himself. Now I know that tired children act like crazy people and you really just need to get them to sleep.<br />
<br />
So in that moment I started to stroke his sweaty little tear-covered face and tell him that I love him. That I didn't want his day to end like this. That he is a kind boy with interesting things to say and I love him so, so much. That I am so grateful I get to be his Mommy.<br />
<br />
He sighed, took a shuttering, shaky breath...<br />
<br />
And screamed, "I DON'T WANT YOU AND YOUR PRETTY HANDS!!"<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_HT10uJbByvBt4cydLdXQIRX17G3zQBy7fAtqJY7p_9mtiF5CZreY3kg1zp8-Oc6aGRSTRM64tTwiALXyoq914Olv3bHc10cSpDy-8I5YQH3-yu5vcURdIxJmIsFI2l8gvvBIe6IoaW_J/s1600/FullSizeRender.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="304" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_HT10uJbByvBt4cydLdXQIRX17G3zQBy7fAtqJY7p_9mtiF5CZreY3kg1zp8-Oc6aGRSTRM64tTwiALXyoq914Olv3bHc10cSpDy-8I5YQH3-yu5vcURdIxJmIsFI2l8gvvBIe6IoaW_J/s320/FullSizeRender.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My bony, unkempt, pretty hands</td></tr>
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<br />
I have pretty hands. Not because they are visually appealing. The crooked broken finger, knobby knuckles (is it really because I crack them?), and bitten-down finger nails prevent any kind of aesthetic pleasure. No, my hands are pretty because they are gentle. Because they are strong. Because they help change clothes and clean off dirt and make dinner and build shelves for Legos.<br />
<br />
I have pretty hands because an irrational three-year-old was soothed and comforted and then angry that he wanted to let go of his fit and rest. Which is still hilarious.<br />
<br />
How many Mommy compliments have I brushed aside because they came from one of those four people while still listening to the implied criticism of people I don't even know? When I feel less than because I no longer have a job...when I'm bummed because my stomach is jiggly...when I look at someone else's Insta-perfect account and feel like I'm missing out...why do I even care?<br />
<br />
Why do so many of my thoughts and feelings of disappointment in myself come from the random people I don't actually care about?<br />
<br />
Because, dammit, I have pretty hands.<br />
<br />
My pretty hands shape the world of four entire human beings. How they view the world, what think about themselves, and what they learn about God and the universe is molded in my hands. They are their own selves, sure, but my hands are the beginning and end to their days, the comfort in their fear, and the only home they know at this point.<br />
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I have pretty hands. I pray I use them well.</div>
Best Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13065964759346952958noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2690271413637754639.post-86226719969346717612016-03-01T14:34:00.003-05:002016-03-01T15:07:50.293-05:00The Triumph of Trivial Distractions...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
When Jay and I were younger, before we had children and a mortgage, we took the money we'd been saving for a down payment on a house and we went to Europe for a month.<br />
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We wandered around, finding hotels when we got to a new city and seeing all the things we'd read about or heard about or, in my case, had just started teaching about--that we could afford to get to. To be clear, that really only included Western Europe (except Spain, they were having a ground transportation strike. An older Welsh man tried to convince us that this was normal and happened in the US, too, but his only evidence was that air traffic controllers went on strike sometime in the '80s and we didn't know what he was talking about).<br />
<br />
So we ate cheese and chocolate in Paris and had good beer in Munich and discovered gelato in Italy. One of the places I was most excited to see was Rome. Not just because of the aqueducts and the Roman roads that made my history geek heart soar, but also because of the art. I couldn't wait to see Raphael and da Vinci and Michelangelo.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0mEtoMVCS3cZntF5uRNxous19LHHDbiEIbLWOZjJBs6EDuB0ky3mRpQ4TJVkIQsyP4isID9lToyBqYmp3zY7Lef1aJ5ZZhyZ4vtfoFkl8rUX3F3M8Gq2wTLg5eJdHf1v6MHc9e__ZT4K_/s1600/IMG_0989+%25282%2529_crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0mEtoMVCS3cZntF5uRNxous19LHHDbiEIbLWOZjJBs6EDuB0ky3mRpQ4TJVkIQsyP4isID9lToyBqYmp3zY7Lef1aJ5ZZhyZ4vtfoFkl8rUX3F3M8Gq2wTLg5eJdHf1v6MHc9e__ZT4K_/s320/IMG_0989+%25282%2529_crop.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">You can't take pictures inside the Vatican Museum so this is me in the Coliseum on that trip. Those are the lovely tickets to the museum that I saved because we used to make scrapbooks before there were digital cameras and the internet. Also I was blonde for some reason.</td></tr>
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<br />
On the day we toured the <a href="http://www.museivaticani.va/3_EN/pages/CSN/CSN_Main.html">Vatican Museum</a> we waited in an incredibly long line that wrapped around a large portion of the perimeter walls of the Vatican. It was crazy hot and there were very loud American teenagers in front of us, one of whom was wearing track pants that said "juicy" on the rear end and I thought, "that might not be the most appropriate outfit for touring the home of the Pope." Sadly, Jay and I don't speak any languages but English well enough to pretend we weren't American so mostly we just tried to edge farther away from them in line.<br />
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After moving through room after room of priceless art in what used to be the papal palace we entered the Sistine Chapel. The ceiling is perhaps the most famous series of Biblical scenes--most people know that moment of <a href="http://www.italianrenaissance.org/michelangelo-creation-of-adam/">God reaching out a finger to meet Adam </a>and deliver the spark that ignites the soul of mankind.<br />
<br />
But the image that caught my attention was the <i>The Last Judgment</i> painted behind the altar. Michelangelo created the ceiling toward the beginning of his career and the far more frightening and overwhelming <i>Last Judgment </i>toward the end. It showed hundreds of nude figures engaged in the battle for the immortal souls of mankind with Jesus at the center. Michelangelo himself is painted into the work as a flayed skin.<br />
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I loved it.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiehuHkb45bq5pOrk4LmYnG7z6md9KVyiIG1hSNXkfeo9lQGB8765YrBCF649SDFNYlBa-ydqeYKLd85XP1oFbw_Y_Kdw15szLbhaYxz8RK1ms2qlmAxkLmM5XeCgV8Jci9o5qP9g9G2Yr4/s1600/michangello-lastjudgment-b+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiehuHkb45bq5pOrk4LmYnG7z6md9KVyiIG1hSNXkfeo9lQGB8765YrBCF649SDFNYlBa-ydqeYKLd85XP1oFbw_Y_Kdw15szLbhaYxz8RK1ms2qlmAxkLmM5XeCgV8Jci9o5qP9g9G2Yr4/s320/michangello-lastjudgment-b+%25281%2529.jpg" width="296" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Picture of <i>The Last Judgment</i> I totally stole from the internet</td></tr>
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When I would teach the Renaissance to 15- and 16-year-olds, I always pointed out that the nude figures had caused quite a controversy (because saying nudity to a room full of 10th graders makes them pay attention). And although Michelangelo was following the Greek and Roman tradition of nudes (which he also did in sculptures--think the statue of <i>David</i>), critics condemned the use of nudity in this painting and eventually many figures had loincloths painted over them so as not to offend those critics.<br />
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The other day, Jay and I were watching a <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_lev_the_unheard_story_of_the_sistine_chapel?language=en#t-866089">TED talk about the Sistine Chape</a>l...you know, as we are wont to do. Art historian Elizabeth Lev gave a passionate overview of Michelangelo's work and if you're at all interested you should take the 17 minutes and watch it. Around minute 13:40 is when she gets to the part about the nudity controversy in <i>The Last Judgement.</i><br />
<br />
It's during that segment that she spoke a phrase that grabbed my attention and wouldn't let go. When she described the cover-up job done to make the nude figures more palatable to the critics, she refers to the entire conflict as "a triumph of trivial distractions over his great exhortation to glory."<br />
<br />
I made Jay pause the video and go back. There was plenty to wrestle with in the painting: Does the raised arm of Jesus bring any comfort or just some good old fashioned smiting? Are the saints and angels rescuing people from hell or are those people crying out for God or is there even a difference if the end is finally actually here? Rumor was that the pope fell down and acknowledged his unworthiness when he saw it (no clue if that's actually true or not).<br />
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But instead of dealing with challenging thoughts concerning the struggles of the human condition or mankind's interpretation of God and expressions of faith, the naked people is what got the press. Veeeerry early press as the printing press was still relatively new, but press nonetheless.<br />
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<b>The triumph of trivial distractions over the exhortation to glory.</b><br />
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How much does that phrase sum up our current political climate? Our current religious climate? Our over-scheduled and tech-filled lives in general? Will there one day be some historian using such a phrase to describe the years in which I lived most of my adulthood?<br />
<br />
I just spent 3 minutes watching a trailer for <a href="https://youtu.be/yo9eSzqn2yI">Ice Age: Collision Course</a>, also known as Ice Age 137. Why did I do that? They're woolly mammoths. I KNOW how this ends. And I'm sure I'll get to enjoy this artistic treasure when it comes out in a few months due to the whining of my kids. I don't need a trailer for more information.<br />
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I cannot in any way account for the amount of time I've spent on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter because it's become a weird sort of default while waiting in lines or, more embarrassingly, at red lights. But these are the obvious trivial distractions in my life...these are the ones I'm aware of caving in to when my mind is sleepy and wants brain candy.<br />
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<b>My bigger fear is this: what other things in my life will look like trivial distractions the further I get from them?</b><br />
<br />
When <a href="http://www.academia.edu/11448286/A_Concise_History_of_the_Tale_of_Michelangelo_and_Biagio_da_Cesena">Biagio da Cesena</a>, the pope's Master of Ceremonies and outspoken critic of the nudes in <i>The Last Judgement</i>, complained about Michelangelo's use of nudity I bet he thought it was a good use of his time. Maybe there were crazy nudes everywhere in Rome in the 1540s and he was just trying to keep his city clean. Maybe he was worried about distracting the future popes and cardinals to come (no one else was allowed in the Sistine Chapel at the time). Maybe he just found Michelangelo to be personally offensive.<br />
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But he wound up ignoring the pain of those descending into hell, the concern on the faces of the saints and angels, and the awakening of the dead in Christ. If he really wanted to point out perceived flaws in the painting he could have called out Michelangelo for using just as much imagery from <a href="http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/d/the-divine-comedy-inferno/summary-and-analysis/canto-i">Dante </a>as he did from the Bible. Instead, he harped on the nudes and got painted into hell by Michelangelo for his efforts. In fact, his,,,um..."bathing suit parts" are tastefully covered by the mouth of a snake.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd7gOqRuRqlZMYav30kyRQbhO1MdaiMH2Xts_x-0RbJi74m59sPKaHarwEDfdVb21aRU_O1bSfMo4IvfCZUsn27rrtwIwihQwrXnbBoocyGtX63-ZuvlJzQYEaG7b46_2fMh_qYGjFfGIW/s1600/minos-michelangelo-last-sup.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd7gOqRuRqlZMYav30kyRQbhO1MdaiMH2Xts_x-0RbJi74m59sPKaHarwEDfdVb21aRU_O1bSfMo4IvfCZUsn27rrtwIwihQwrXnbBoocyGtX63-ZuvlJzQYEaG7b46_2fMh_qYGjFfGIW/s1600/minos-michelangelo-last-sup.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Biagio as Minos--another picture I stole from the internet</td></tr>
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Whether or not Biagio was justified in his criticism isn't really my point. My point is that it was the easiest topic to fixate on, to spread information about, and to argue over. My point is that discussion was bogged down on one small aspect of the whole to the detriment of everything else. He spent his time and energy on a topic that, in the end, didn't really matter all that much.<br />
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Do you know what I talk about with people the most? Summer camps for the kids, places we visit, upcoming projects for the house. Occasionally I get into political discussions or talk about a movie I've seen. These aren't bad topics. They're things I'm doing in my life and things that have to be done.<br />
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But am I missing my exhortation to glory? Am I allowing my to-do list to triumph over the call to love my neighbor? Am I sinking into the safety of my ordered life while the battle for justice and freedom rages around me unseen?<br />
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I'm gonna go ahead and say yes.<br />
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What are my trivial distractions? What could glory look like? What might my imaginary future historian about this moment say if we all try to find out? What if we attempted to look around at the lives of others without jealousy over our carefully culled social media presentations? What if we stopped obsessing over raising perfect children or getting perfect bodies?<br />
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Let's not be known as a generation of people who allowed the triumph of trivial distractions to overcome the exhortation to glory. I think we can do it. </div>
Best Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13065964759346952958noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2690271413637754639.post-6144381905754015922016-01-26T00:54:00.000-05:002016-01-26T00:54:56.615-05:00Stuff I Didn't Instagram in 2015<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
My blog and I have been in a fight. We haven't been on speaking terms and it's a little bit hard to explain why. The easiest reason is that I just haven't felt like talking, but that's not really an answer. A better explanation would be to say that I have been oddly melancholy. Not sad or broken or in pain, but blah. And blah does not want to write. I miss her (my blog), though. We think about things together and she helps me organize my thoughts. She also becomes a set of talking points with my actual friends in the actual world in between yelling at children and folding laundry.<br />
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So I decided to mend the fences and return to this old friend by writing about some of the things I didn't bother to talk about while they were actually happening. Here are 5 things I didn't share on social media in 2015:<br />
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<b>Travel Fails</b><br />
As part of our desire <a href="http://imthebestmom.com/2015/03/our-crazy-move-to-smaller-crappier-house.html">to live "more closely"</a> we made a pact to <a href="http://imthebestmom.com/2015/03/our-50-nifty-united-states-adventure.html">visit all 50 states as a family</a> over the next 2-3 years. We wanted to show our children adventure, the beauty of our country, and that Jay and I are not always completely in control of what happens in life. We have been to 31 states so far and it looked like this:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic5L-LwdOi2TvfvhUj1IHSHku2_bYvajCHYd0spntD3lZj7d8RKzcrpJuN03xPiMTxYsQG0P_tdHgUmBF34K1IGGAI7C0DcmQ-q6MN1mD0PIXD2kFL_ICsM_eFnN18lVkIIM_A4touQf5C/s1600/IMG_0226.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic5L-LwdOi2TvfvhUj1IHSHku2_bYvajCHYd0spntD3lZj7d8RKzcrpJuN03xPiMTxYsQG0P_tdHgUmBF34K1IGGAI7C0DcmQ-q6MN1mD0PIXD2kFL_ICsM_eFnN18lVkIIM_A4touQf5C/s320/IMG_0226.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Beach in Los Angeles</td></tr>
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And this:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTvJmffaKE27vrLEoGOcCK-gm57TbHwgDhADgh6-5udXwcOTc_jPbNL90D-CYa1phuDtQvdX87LlznwBw2Ma3vdAcxmXcgkVESsIP_RkD6EVhr88pAYHyhZG2GbxLnipp15S8mpJQF9jkw/s1600/IMG_0581.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTvJmffaKE27vrLEoGOcCK-gm57TbHwgDhADgh6-5udXwcOTc_jPbNL90D-CYa1phuDtQvdX87LlznwBw2Ma3vdAcxmXcgkVESsIP_RkD6EVhr88pAYHyhZG2GbxLnipp15S8mpJQF9jkw/s320/IMG_0581.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My 7-year-old Contemplating the Grand Canyon</td></tr>
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And this:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiypy4eraeigqWTPBM-vwe1ghF9XWYeGiCC2DOGy3iD0DMWcGes0jw4z91YxSzmJ2kTy3reZYei2k5xIHxJgkIadsYJ8AzxBg3gzFrz4J26NMJ1XfpysYFIXDFMQ1b-vL_65FN3DSO7nkUU/s1600/IMG_9054.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiypy4eraeigqWTPBM-vwe1ghF9XWYeGiCC2DOGy3iD0DMWcGes0jw4z91YxSzmJ2kTy3reZYei2k5xIHxJgkIadsYJ8AzxBg3gzFrz4J26NMJ1XfpysYFIXDFMQ1b-vL_65FN3DSO7nkUU/s320/IMG_9054.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park</td></tr>
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Clearly these would be the kind of pictures that I DID share on Instagram. But right after that shot at the beach we got on a plane for Atlanta. Which meant I had to wash off sandy children. Which meant that there was a moment when I shared an outdoor public beach shower with a naked three-year-old and a Russian man. And then I put wet, sandy clothes into a plastic bag to carry onto an airplane. Well played, Sally.<br />
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That day at the Grand Canyon was pretty amazing. I saw it for the first time with my babies and it was beautiful. But that picture was taken in the brief few moments that weren't pouring rain or covered in fog. Fog settled so deep into the canyon that the canyon itself ceased to exist. That fog stayed there for the rest of our time we had inside the park. I still had a good time, but it wasn't exactly what I had in mind.<br />
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The last picture is of Yellowstone and I would go back there in a heartbeat. It is as amazing as you've ever heard. It is also where one of my children caught an unfortunate stomach bug from one of the other children. The end result was that I spent a good three quarters of an hour cleaning both vomit and diarrhea out of a car seat in the parking lot of some fascinating geothermal features. The upside was that the horrible sulphur smell made the horrible car smell a lot less noticeable.<br />
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There are so many more trip stories that didn't go as we planned; kid meltdown in the airport security line of the world's busiest airport...getting kicked out of Independence Hall in Philadelphia... our first attempt to see Mount Rushmore that resulted in me crying in the car in the dark. I didn't share any of these events because it sounded totally whiny in my head--we have been on several amazing trips this year and I certainly wouldn't trade them.<br />
<br />
But I realized, especially through the holiday season when I kept seeing people I don't see very often, that other people seemed to think our trips were easy. They were not. They take effort and lifestyle sacrifice and planning (but not too much planning) and a healthy dose of reality at every turn. When we hadn't even made it to Birmingham, Alabama (about 2 1/2 hours from Atlanta) before a kid lost a pair of underwear in a Starbucks bathroom on our drive to Wyoming, I had some serious doubts.<br />
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I wish I had written more about the difficult parts because I'd love for more people to believe that they can take their kids anywhere. There may be poop to clean up, but that's true at home, too.<br />
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<b><u>Homeschooling is Hard</u></b><br />
I fully admit that until three or four years ago I thought that anyone who chose an option other than public school was a weirdo. As with all generalized judgments, I began to change my mind when I actually met some people who were making different choices and it broadened my mind. But, seriously, <a href="http://imthebestmom.com/2015/04/so-i-started-homeschooling-my-kids-sort.html">I never EVER thought I'd go down this road for my kids.</a> It has allowed freedom for our family to travel more, certainly a degree of close that we didn't have before, and I have been amazed at the conversations I get to have with my tween kid. BUT.<br />
<br />
It's hard.<br />
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What I shared about homeschooling did not reveal that.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHpADBW_stKEIvYUeehrRIxd3VOBMMkufYN_IKVN7bPZyXWCRd5GWCuRJt_sraFWc4I8QUvM63uh9hiecmMPQQ2HqdYOlkBJ-yEoZbyHJhFZUbBrecVu2-5n-Y5qF7j7fPBYKEu9UKHPW5/s1600/IMG_0228.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHpADBW_stKEIvYUeehrRIxd3VOBMMkufYN_IKVN7bPZyXWCRd5GWCuRJt_sraFWc4I8QUvM63uh9hiecmMPQQ2HqdYOlkBJ-yEoZbyHJhFZUbBrecVu2-5n-Y5qF7j7fPBYKEu9UKHPW5/s320/IMG_0228.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Adorable 5-year-old Working on that Tricky S</td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo64RrQygFpmSmeq3w44SjzN5ufbljHlr8LT30rdFQre_V0Dpan8Hm4FaoCl177SjEWxd71ZNMFJGuMCudD-3AR2QdNlzZQB-Vnk_YZ25WDPvGrzr19h7S9LaWZN4MehyG0Kp_lCuerVO-/s1600/IMG_0608.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo64RrQygFpmSmeq3w44SjzN5ufbljHlr8LT30rdFQre_V0Dpan8Hm4FaoCl177SjEWxd71ZNMFJGuMCudD-3AR2QdNlzZQB-Vnk_YZ25WDPvGrzr19h7S9LaWZN4MehyG0Kp_lCuerVO-/s320/IMG_0608.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Amazingly Fun/Cold Field Trip to the Etowah Indian Mounds</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I shared an occasional pic of domestic adorableness with kids crowded around colorful school work. Or shots of field trip days while other, sadder, children were cooped up in cement block walls. I did not share moments like today, when I yelled so loudly that I kind-of hurt my voice. Also, I put a kid on the back porch to calm down and HE screamed so loudly that our elderly next door neighbor was on my back porch checking him for injuries when I came to check on him. So I expect DFACS any day now.<br />
<br />
I don't even stay home with them every day. The kids attend a nontraditional private school two days a week and then complete their work with me. I don't make up the curriculum, they're not home all the time, and I'm <i>still</i> a horribly yell-y person. I'm confessing this because every mom I've ever told that I homeschool has said, "oh, I couldn't do that. I don't have the patience." Yeah, well, me neither. But here we are.<br />
<br />
<b><u>My House is Broken (with rats)</u></b><br />
Here's what I shared about my house this year:<br />
<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This Super-Awesome Wallpaper. And I own a Record Player</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOGxJ4G1iv6H39nTvmRXLw8Shbs1GXPecZt7iijbYqo499wRgS_XuPGxxEk1t8iX0CucfeMAeAf-hjUTlLSOmrYuKnefdRhyphenhyphenugMPvh2Vi7ZFiryxNexJzy7rrteJLgF53RlBiMNibPufeo/s1600/IMG_0590.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOGxJ4G1iv6H39nTvmRXLw8Shbs1GXPecZt7iijbYqo499wRgS_XuPGxxEk1t8iX0CucfeMAeAf-hjUTlLSOmrYuKnefdRhyphenhyphenugMPvh2Vi7ZFiryxNexJzy7rrteJLgF53RlBiMNibPufeo/s320/IMG_0590.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">More Super-Awesome Wallpaper with Snowflakes and a Mirror I Love</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
What I did not detail was that everything is broken. We have replaced the electricity. And the roof STILL has leaks..the new leak is THROUGH the stove's exhaust fan so now I'm afraid to use that. We replaced a toilet, but it still works funny. Also, the pipes leak..it's too long of a story to explain why. The yard is mostly moss. We hired a guy to replace the counter top that was broken in the kitchen and he disappeared before the job was done. We hadn't paid him or anything, so I have no idea where he went, but it's been months and months and I still haven't dealt with the functioning chaos that is the stupid freaking kitchen.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I didn't mention any of this because it is warm and safe and the roof mostly works. I am very lucky to have these things. But, again, I feel like I gave off the impression that downsizing into an old house has been emotionally freeing when the reality is that I have felt like I had a splinter under my fingernail for a year. It's not debilitating, but it is a constant irritant.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Oh, and there were rats. RATS, I tell you.<br />
<br />
<b><u>I Gained 30 Pounds</u></b><br />
I gained 30 pounds and I only posted pictures of myself that didn't make that obvious. I am not going to change that pattern now, but I will admit to it. I have, in the past, shared marathon and half-marathon and triathlon successes, but I didn't at all mention that moving and suddenly having my school-aged children home with me really screwed up my workout plan. I apparently also eat when I am stressed, nervous, or worried and that has been all of 2015.<br />
<br />
The friends I have mentioned this to have seemed surprised I've gained that much weight; that either means they're lying so as not to offend my jiggly-stomached self or that I am a terrible dresser who really needs to wear better clothing. Both are strong possibilities.<br />
<br />
<b><u>Anything Actually Sad</u></b><br />
O.k., I realize that social media is not exactly the place to deal with deep dark personal problems, but it's why we all feel totally inferior when we see other people's lives through the lenses of Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/Snapchat/FuSizzle. (I made that last one up, but I think it could catch on.) Actual sad things deserve face-to-face conversation and prayer and maybe a casserole.<br />
<br />
A man I went to college with committed suicide and for some reason he contacted me a few hours before he did so. Another friend has a child fighting to regain a childhood while dealing with cancer. None of my problems or musings for the last six months have been because of my own deep struggles so I just didn't mention any of my stresses or annoyances. How can I chat away about parenting irritations or travel snafus or my damn kitchen when so many people are in pain so thick they can't breathe? So I didn't say anything.<br />
<br />
<br />
I don't know what any of this means for my 2016 blog. I miss it and I miss connecting with friends I see out in the world who say "I feel the same way!" and then suddenly this fake community is tangible and real. So for now I'm committing to posting throughout the year and I'll see what that means as I go. I'm also really sorry if my scatter-shot sharing of my life made any of you feel jealous or inferior or randomly annoyed. You're welcome to come over and hang out in my little house and we can chat about life face-to-face and remind each other that our lives are all more alike than not. (I promise we got rid of the rats.)</div>
</div>
Best Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13065964759346952958noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2690271413637754639.post-26538673081049696322015-06-22T01:09:00.000-04:002015-06-22T01:09:07.675-04:00Why do All Those Kids Have Brown Skin?: Hard Questions from My Kids<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Mommy, why do all those kids have brown skin?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I got this question from my 10-year-old when we were pulling
up to a field trip at the Georgia Aquarium recently and my first reaction was
just confusion. What in the world was she talking about? Then I realized that
she was looking at a class of children from an inner city Atlanta school and I
followed confusion with horror—<i>am I somehow raising a racist kid? </i>And then my
mind finally rested on the most likely meaning of her question:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Do you mean, ‘why are there no other races in that class?’”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Yeah. My classes always have kids with light skin and brown
skin. And Friana’s family is from India and Eliza’s family is from Vietnam. There
are lots of colors. Why doesn’t that class have different races?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So I took a deep breath and started to formulate an answer
that was both accurate and age appropriate and possible to get out of my mouth during
the time it took us to get into the parking deck and meet her class at the
Aquarium.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I bet a lot of my mom friends have been in that same
awkward, and yet incredibly important, moment of parenthood. When your kid asks
you a question without an easy answer, or a short answer, or even an answer one
could give to adults.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Why are there still all-Black elementary classes?</i> Good
grief. That just makes my heart heavy with the responsibility to get this one
answer right.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have been thinking about how to talk about race relations
with my children a lot recently. We were in Baltimore about a week before the
Freddie Gray death and subsequent riots and my daughter asked me about that.
She saw me looking at pictures of the Orioles playing in an empty stadium and
asked what was going on in that picture. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We had just driven by the stadium and pointed it out to the
kids. We found Charm City to be lovely and gracious and everyone we met was so
welcoming. To see parts of it burning and hurting was painful and sad. And my
children, who have been taught that police are the good guys, were very
confused by the violence. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We have toured the Old Slave Mart in Charleston and seen the
tiny shackles made for little children and listened to the stories of men and
women sold on the auction block. I did not take pictures because it seemed too
awful to have smiling white children posing for photographs where human beings
were bought and sold for the wealth of others. My children know of our country’s
history with slavery and are shocked when they realize that it happened in our
home town, in our state, in our own family’s history. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is shocking. Still. I don’t think we can ever let it
cease to shock us.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When something like the shooting in Charleston, or Trayvon
Martin, or the riots in Ferguson happen I am again confronted with the awful, “what
in the world do I say about this to my children? What are they capable of
understanding? What role do I, a Caucasian woman, play in healing this terrible
wound?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As usual, when I don’t know what to do in a parenting
moment, I play back the advice of my mother. If we still lived in a world with “wise
women,” my mother would be one. She has an innate ability to see the world from
other people’s eyes and act with understanding and compassion. Honestly, it is
convicting and inspiring all at once. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mom says that when a child asks a hard question you answer
honestly, without your own emotions getting in the way, and answer only the
question asked. Then you wait for more questions.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have some experience with this because Jay experienced the
death of a parent at a young age. I have been asked various questions about “what
happened to Daddy’s Daddy” and it is always hard. I have had to say, “yes,
mommies and daddies can die, but it is not very common.” And, “yes it is very
sad for Daddy that he doesn’t have a daddy anymore.” I answer the question they
ask and wait for a follow up. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thus far it has been solemn and heavy and difficult, but I
can’t ignore their questions or gloss over the hardest parts or tell them that they
don’t have to worry about their parents because I don’t know if that’s true. It
wasn’t true in Jay’s life. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So while mulling over my sadness at yet more death and
racial pain in our country I had this challenging thought: I cannot avoid the
question of parental death because it is a real part of our lives and our
history. And if I’m avoiding the hard parts of the questions my kids ask about
race inequality (and they DO ask) I’m acting as though it’s not a part of my
life and my history. And that makes me part of the problem.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So in the Aquarium parking lot I made myself say, “Well,
honey, students come from the neighborhood around the school, and that
neighborhood has mostly African-Americans.” And when she said, “Why? Why don’t people
of other races live there?” I replied with, “our city was segregated for a long
time and certain neighborhoods were Black and certain ones were White.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And as the “whys” kept coming, I slowly outlined the
concepts of changes to laws without changes to people’s hearts and perceived property
values and social mobility all in short, halting sentences as best I could in a
tiny amount of time. Clearly, I could not do this topic justice in the
situation and possibly not even if I’d had all afternoon and a map and a
timeline at my disposal (which I would have loved, by the way). <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I don’t need to attack my kids with information about every
frightening news story I hear, but can’t shy away from mentioning a church
bombing in Birmingham or a protest downtown if it answers a relevant question. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Block Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Hyperlink"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="FollowedHyperlink"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Document Map"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Plain Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="E-mail Signature"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Top of Form"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Bottom of Form"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Normal (Web)"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Acronym"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Address"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Cite"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Code"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Definition"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Keyboard"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Preformatted"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Sample"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Typewriter"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Variable"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Normal Table"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="annotation subject"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="No List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Simple 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Simple 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Simple 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Colorful 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Colorful 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Colorful 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table 3D effects 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table 3D effects 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table 3D effects 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Contemporary"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Elegant"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Professional"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Subtle 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Subtle 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Web 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Web 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Web 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Balloon Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Theme"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Level 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Level 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Level 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Level 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Level 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Level 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Level 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Level 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Level 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Revision"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" QFormat="true"
Name="List Paragraph"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" QFormat="true"
Name="Subtle Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" QFormat="true"
Name="Subtle Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="41" Name="Plain Table 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="42" Name="Plain Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="43" Name="Plain Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="44" Name="Plain Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="45" Name="Plain Table 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="40" Name="Grid Table Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46" Name="Grid Table 1 Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51" Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52" Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46" Name="List Table 1 Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="List Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="List Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="List Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="List Table 5 Dark"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51" Name="List Table 6 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52" Name="List Table 7 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="List Table 1 Light Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="List Table 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="List Table 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="List Table 4 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="List Table 5 Dark Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="List Table 6 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="List Table 7 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="List Table 1 Light Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="List Table 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="List Table 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="List Table 4 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="List Table 5 Dark Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="List Table 6 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="List Table 7 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="List Table 1 Light Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="List Table 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="List Table 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="List Table 4 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="List Table 5 Dark Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="List Table 6 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="List Table 7 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="List Table 1 Light Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="List Table 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="List Table 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="List Table 4 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="List Table 5 Dark Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="List Table 6 Colorful Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="List Table 7 Colorful Accent 4"/>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
I cannot fix our nation’s painful history. I cannot cause
crazy people to choose murder victims by some other means than the color of
their skin. But I can tell my children the truth about our ugly past, I can do
my best to explain our racially murky present, and maybe I can raise adults who
will be better equipped to create bridges in our society than we are.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
Best Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13065964759346952958noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2690271413637754639.post-41628894042896323492015-06-01T17:14:00.001-04:002015-06-01T18:41:02.765-04:00How I Keep from Going Crazy all Summer (A Half-Assed Plan)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7UKKwriAqZlX2ftWoMoU8KODWIg9hCtuGfhx7bapmq5apQHld-TGzLxtIV8kpM0ZcJm5znDdFUBzmPeEYsWSrlHXhmBbbbAf4_-Z2BhnOukpyO48P-3458pwBsBvFBoy2FS0-P92CbW0Q/s1600/checklist.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="171" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7UKKwriAqZlX2ftWoMoU8KODWIg9hCtuGfhx7bapmq5apQHld-TGzLxtIV8kpM0ZcJm5znDdFUBzmPeEYsWSrlHXhmBbbbAf4_-Z2BhnOukpyO48P-3458pwBsBvFBoy2FS0-P92CbW0Q/s200/checklist.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
You count down the days. You may even have a paper chain or a calendar to cross off. You fill up water balloons and super-soakers to meet the bus. You plan a bar-b-cue at the neighborhood pool with popsicles and icees and it's like one big town-wide party for everyone with school-age kids.<br />
<br />
No more poster board projects your kid remembers at 10:37p.m. the night before it's due! No more mountains of papers requiring your signature that you sign away hoping that none of them gave over the deed to your house! No more convoluted list of "90s day" and "sports day" and "wear blue for whale/earth/clean-water-for-all day" because, God forbid, your kid wears green (unless it's St. Patrick's Day and then your kid had BETTER wear green or he will get PINCHED. And, also, make sure your kid knows that pinching is sometimes called assault and if he does so you will be called to come get him from school.) Hooray for SUMMER!<br />
<br />
And then you're slammed upside the head with the reality that your kids no longer have an exhausting 8 hours of school to attend that will mellow them into normal(ish) people and you are solely responsible for finding SOMETHING, for Pete's sake, ANYthing to do all day long.<br />
<br />
For two months. Two WHOLE months. That's the same amount of time you spent feeding the little buggers every 2 hours at the beginning of their lives and you knew at the time it would NEVER END and you would always be tired. And it did end, but you were right about the tired part.<br />
<br />
How can summer be so much fun and also make you want to send your kids to boarding school?<br />
<br />
As the daughter of teachers and, eventually, as a teacher myself, I have spent my entire life counting down the days to summer. By the time I quit teaching, I had school age children myself and so the counting has never stopped.<br />
<br />
When summer finally came during my teaching years, I wanted to lie in bed until 10 and then do all the household projects that I never had time to do for the other 10 months of the year. And I did do that for the first several years.<br />
<br />
But then I had kids and they kept waking up at 6:30 and expecting to be "fed" and asking "what are we going to do today?" That's when I realized that I had to actually come up with something to do today.<br />
<br />
During school, kids don't have much free time and they are, therefore, obsessed with the "plan" for each day. I found myself rather exasperatedly yelling "the PLAN is to finish your laundry, make a grocery list, and pick up the dry cleaning! What do you people want from me?"<br />
<br />
Clearly, they wanted a plan and I did not really want to make one all that much.<br />
<br />
Which is unfortunate. There are the weeks when the kids have various day camps or we go on vacation for a couple of weeks and there will be some time spending the night at grandparent's houses, but the rest of the days are up to me and I need to make the all-important plan.<br />
<br />
Here is where, if you want some really cute craft ideas or an adorable calendar, you should go to Pinterest. There are wonderful tutorials on all sorts of crafts and creative games. You will not find that here, because my plan is not like that. My plan is half-assed and it goes like this:<br />
<br />
I make a check-list. Each kid has to complete their check-list every day. That's it. That's the whole plan.<br />
<br />
Each kid's check-list has the following items:<br />
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>School Time</li>
<li>Clean Something</li>
<li>Go Outside</li>
<li>Read Something</li>
<li>Creative Time</li>
<li>Help the Family Team</li>
<li>See Someone Else</li>
<li>Make Your Bed</li>
<li>Exercise</li>
</ul>
<br />
And I don't even tell them what the specific activities are. Bwa-ah-ah! It is evil parenting genius.<br />
<br />
See, I don't like being told what to do even if I am the one making the assignment. So if I plan our weeks out hour by hour I am just as likely to rebel against our detailed plans as the children are. I don't like to be pinned down to one particularly activity or itinerary days and weeks ahead of time. I am fully aware of how immature that is, but so what, you're not the boss of me and I don't care what you think!<br />
<br />
So I made a check list. If we go swimming with some friends at the YMCA pool we can check off Outside, See Someone, AND Exercise! If a kid can't think of anything to do they can clean something. I get to vasssilate between Benevolent Dictator and Best Mom Ever and the children stop asking me what we're doing next.<br />
<br />
I say it's reading time--I'm the Benevolent Dictator!<br />
We take a surprise trip to get frozen yogurt--Best Mom Ever!<br />
<br />
Really, the children just want to know that there are some rules and some sense of direction when there is no school. I do actually buy workbooks for them to work through and make them do the work regularly enough that they know how and when to do them during School Time. I give them cleaning tasks they can accomplish without me--laundry, sweeping, dishes, etc.<br />
<br />
Creative time means we spend some time making art or music of some sort. I have a craft box that I put on the kitchen table and tell them to go nuts. Or we have a dance party. It depends on whether or not I want to sweep the kitchen again.<br />
<br />
I have found that if I try to implement too strict of a schedule that it falls apart because there are so many odd days--visits with friends or trips to see family or a late night out all mess up any plan I may have. My creativity also peters out as the summer wears on and our activities become a lot less exciting--what was Water Olympics in June becomes "getting hosed down before you're let inside the house" by the end of July.<br />
<br />
So the checklists work for us--some structure, but a LOT of freedom. And if for some reason, I don't make them wipe down a bathroom, they are just happy they didn't have to clean (Benevolent Dictator strikes again).<br />
<br />
Happy Summer!<br />
<br />
Love,<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Sally the Benevolent Dictator (aka Best Mom Ever)</span></div>
Best Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13065964759346952958noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2690271413637754639.post-52768187456624074772015-05-12T20:07:00.001-04:002016-01-16T22:51:24.454-05:0010 Ways to Waste Less Time on a Guy You'll Never Marry (advice for my single friends)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiZEmkchPUTEoqtxw3lN40zO9T7g0kRiksZOm4piGablr533fUnLjH1KwtN_gILtNwKClWIsJvpPffbhemcJSthG0IShB8gCDGtOVhu6h4lRmUSA-tJLmsm7ti20MQOQ9NYFRCDmIarcMo/s1600/Jay+and+me.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiZEmkchPUTEoqtxw3lN40zO9T7g0kRiksZOm4piGablr533fUnLjH1KwtN_gILtNwKClWIsJvpPffbhemcJSthG0IShB8gCDGtOVhu6h4lRmUSA-tJLmsm7ti20MQOQ9NYFRCDmIarcMo/s200/Jay+and+me.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jay and me taking our own Easter pic because kids suck</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Summer is approaching and that means it’s time for my
anniversary, which obviously makes me grateful for making a really good choice
17 years ago.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And it’s wedding season for all my friends in their 20s and
that makes me think about that time in my life when it seemed like every
weekend from May to September we had another wedding to attend. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s also time for graduations and that turns my mind to the
two groups of beautiful girls I got to walk with for a season of their high
school years—one group is a year out of college and the other is a year out of
high school at this point. They are just entering those years of wedding fever
and never-ending “save the date” cards.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And then I thought, wouldn’t it be fun if I could help my
single-girl friends in some small way with what I’ve learned from my marriage and
the marriages (both successful and not-so-much) of my friends and family. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So, for all my singletons, here are my suggestions on how to keep from wasting too much of your time on a
guy you won’t end up marrying.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>1. Be a really good friend</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You should be a really good friend
to all the guys AND girls in your life, whether or not you’re thinking of
dating them. When someone needs to talk, you listen. When someone needs help
moving, you bring a label maker. When someone is having a hard time, you offer
encouragement. Don’t talk about your
friends behind their backs. Don’t judge them for whatever ridiculous (to you) problem
they have going on. Don’t attempt to
solve their (or your) problems with tequila. It does not ever make anything
better.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Do you know what happens when you’re
a good friend? You become a better person. And you’re better able to identify
the people in your life (male and female) who help <i>make</i> you a better person. Because I married my very best friend, I
have run marathons, and made paintings we hang in our house, and spent the
summer in Europe. Jay spurs me on, makes me better, and encourages me to do
great things. I’d never have had that kind of love in my corner if I hadn’t
been a good friend first.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>2. Watch how he treats other people</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">When you spend time with a guy pay special
attention to how he talks to and about the other people in his life. Does he
gripe about his mom always being on his case? Does he badmouth his roommate? Does
he complain about his boss all the time? That is not going to get better with
age. Even if his boss sounds like an evil minion from the Hell of Retail
Inventory Night and his mom makes Martha Stewart look laid back, he has a
choice. He could choose a different attitude, he could choose a different job,
he could shut up about his mom because she gave him life, for Pete’s sake. </span><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">If his bad mood is always someone else’s
fault, don’t bother.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">A corollary to this one is to pay attention to
how he talks to strangers. If he is rude or dismissive to wait staff or acts
annoyed by all the other people on the sidewalk, he is not a nice person inside.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><b>3. Compare your goals and values</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">The goals one is kind of tricky because he (and you)
may not exactly know what all your goals are. You might, but you are just as
likely for those goals to shift as your life changes. So I’m not talking about
things like “we both want to be attorneys.” I mean way more broad things like “I’d
like to have a family one day” or “I’d like to travel with my kids” or </span><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">“I want to work with a non-profit.” Even if life doesn’t exactly work out that
way, these dreamy kinds of conversations reveal a lot about what is important
to a person. If he says he never wants kids (and you do), believe him and move
on—there is no middle ground on children. If he says he wants to spend his 20s
really focusing on his career, but you want to get married, trust that he means it and check back when he’s
30. If he says his current goal is to buy the newest Xbox whatever, he is not
yet a grownup and does not understand the concept of a goal. Back away slowly
so as not to startle him.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">His values should be ones you value. He should be loyal and faithful to his
family. He should be loyal and faithful to his friends and controlled
substances should have no effect on that. He should finish what he starts. He
should work hard and save money and not waste what he has. (Side note: if you are having a hard time valuing these things you should not be in a serious relationship. You are not yet a grownup and it is his turn to back away slowly.) </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">You should share the
same faith and not because one of you requires it of the other. Although I
certainly know couples who have different beliefs and live happy lives, it is much
easier if you don’t have to navigate that particular landmine. At some point in
life, you and your husband are not going to feel in love. If you both love the
same God, then at least your hearts are still pointing in the same direction. This is a much easier reason to walk away before a deep relationship starts than it is after.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><b>4. Look for his commitment level (and not to his
fantasy football league)</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">Marriages only succeed if divorce is not an
option to both parties. If one of you is just “hoping for the best,” I have
news: </span><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">No one’s marriage ever involves
only “the best.” At some point, the worst or the not-so-great or the
horrifyingly mundane are going to occur and you need someone who understands commitment.
So if he flits from job to job without giving reasonable notice or his friends
make jokes about how he never shows up on time, he is not ready for a serious
relationship.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><b>5. Do something you both hate</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">Jay and I once volunteered to help build a
Habitat for Humanity house and we had a terrible time. It was 147 degrees, it
was an all day commitment on a Saturday, and we are apparently very bad manual
laborers. We were tired and cranky and really disappointed to discover that we
are, in fact, incredibly selfish jerks. But we also made each other laugh (when
we passed briefly on our way to another mind-numbing task) and encouraged each other
and have joked about how miserably we failed to be altruistic for years. So
fold laundry or do your taxes or babysit some horrible children.</span><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">A lot of life is doing tasks you don’t want
to do and someone who can make the experience better, even if neither of you is
having fun, is a person worth keeping.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><b>6. Talk about something controversial</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">Pick a topic—abortion, police brutality,
marriage equality, war, famine, the mess that is the Big Ten (it does NOT have
10 teams)—and ask what he thinks.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">You’re not actually looking for the two of you to agree—you’re looking
for how he talks about topics with emotional responses. If a person can’t see
the other side of a situation or if their own feelings bring out severe language
or anger, that person is probably not going to fight fair when he’s upset. And
you need to be able to fight fair in a grown-up relationship. You have to be
able to look past your own feelings and try to see what your partner is saying.
If a guy can’t talk about a political topic without cursing and derogatory
language, then be prepared to be cursed at and insulted when you get into a
fight.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><b>7. Meet his family. All of it.</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">You are, too, marrying his family. I don’t know
why people say “you’re not marrying his MOM” or whatever, because you
totally now belong to another family and all their crazy once you are married.
And every family has crazy. I’m not going to offer examples because my family
might read this—just know that I have wonderful in-laws whom I love very much
and yet, the crazy stories are there. They always are. Clearly, you are not
likely to hang out with some dude’s family before you have a relationship of some
sort, but before you decide to get hitched forever you should see how he
interacts with his family and whether or not you’d be willing to have your kids
call that woman Grandma. They certainly don’t have to be perfect, but he should
be able to be kind and loving to them while still acknowledging that they are
(at least a little bit) crazy.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><b>8. Want to have sex with him (later)</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">Notice that I did not list one this first. Our culture
tends to make this “spark” the first checkmark on the dating possibility list and
then tries to wade through the other qualities in a person later. But the
reality is that finding someone attractive is really not that hard. I can think
of several people I wouldn’t mind having sex with and not all of them are Ryan
Gosling. Although I’m not sure I trust anyone with abs like that so maybe Chris
Pratt… or Indiana Jones (not Harrison Ford, the actual treasure-hunting
professor)… I have a thing for swashbuckling goofballs…o.k. I’m losing the
thread here...</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">The point is that the “spark” is possible with
lots of people in your life so, yes, it should be there, but it shouldn’t be given
as much weight as our society tends to give it. All sparks have their ups and downs
and a lot of people equate that feeling with love. When their spark is on a downturn
for days or weeks or even months, they say they’ve “fallen out of love” or “grown
apart” and notice that spark in a coworker or old friend and over time a
marriage ends. So, yeah, want to have sex with him, but make sure you’re paying
attention to all the other points before you do anything about it. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><b>9. Discount his willingness to have sex with you</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">For some reason women tend to read extra meaning
into a guy’s desire. It makes us feel beautiful or sexy or wanted and that has
value to us. Just like it is not all that special for you to be attracted to a
guy, it is not all that special for him to be attracted to you. Clearly, he
should be into you. And if he asks you out, he is. But all that means is that sex
is fun and you seem willing, not that he is the one true love of your life. Don’t
confuse the point.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; text-indent: -0.25in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-stretch: normal; text-indent: -0.25in;">10. </span><span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; text-indent: -0.25in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">Pray</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">Right before my wedding I was sitting in the
bridal room in the narthex of a little church listening to guests enter and be
seated and I had a near panic attack. I sat there thinking, “what I am doing,
this is ridiculous, marriage is forever, oh no, oh no, oh no. Alright, this is
your last chance to back out—do you want to leave?” So I prayed and asked God, “is
this right?” And then I remembered that I was promising myself to Jay, my best
friend, the person with whom I wanted to do all the tasks of my life—silly,
adventurous, mundane—and I smiled. Marriage is scary. Marriage to Jay just
sounded fun. Prayer lets you take a breath and listen. Prayer lets you find
focus. Prayer keeps you in love when you don’t want to be and keeps you married
when you’re mad and keeps you sane when your family grows. Start before you are
a couple by yourself and continue it together when you get serious.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
So there you go. Ten ways to help weed out the guys who could
suck you in and waste years of your life before you finally go, “wait, why am I
still here?” and then have to move all of your stuff. And if you’re not in a
place where you want an actual adult dating relationship, just tuck these
thoughts away and practice the non-sex related ones on your friends. Good, kind
people who make you better and lift your spirits are always the best ones to be
around anyway.</div>
</div>
Best Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13065964759346952958noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2690271413637754639.post-41335884955651671172015-05-09T15:36:00.003-04:002015-05-09T15:37:40.325-04:00A Love Note for Moms on Mother's Day<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVeZbrxMYucLVTw75xRMAwfAHEtD8BrnBkaRuPr_rPhea4c75oFh2n4SS_3E7uWqotgWtoliO-3QGn6Rok8pSdS82YlOM9On5IeBpzQouTgg3uUWmpgYXoiD_DCx18tAqEzNdJkcYxTJc0/s1600/flowers.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVeZbrxMYucLVTw75xRMAwfAHEtD8BrnBkaRuPr_rPhea4c75oFh2n4SS_3E7uWqotgWtoliO-3QGn6Rok8pSdS82YlOM9On5IeBpzQouTgg3uUWmpgYXoiD_DCx18tAqEzNdJkcYxTJc0/s200/flowers.JPG" width="149" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is the time of year when we moms kind of awkwardly
accept cards and flowers and breakfasts in bed because, somehow, this is what
men and children think moms want. And it is sweet and we love our families and
we appreciate their kind words. But we also feel a little silly. Because we are
Mom and it’s our job and who knows if we’re even doing right? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
No one knows, really, if you’re doing it “right.” But there
are some things I do know about you just because you are called mom. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I know that you were surprised by how freaking hard it is to
have a newborn. Not only were you sleep- deprived and covered in goo, but you
couldn’t figure out how you might ever find your way out of the darkness that
is the newborn cave and crawl your way back toward your old self. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And I know that at the same time, you were petrified of
leaving that baby with anyone else because even if you had no clue what you
were doing, you were also all in and crazy protective of that tiny lump of
humanity you made.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I know that you sometimes think things like “I would like
just one day where no one says ‘mommy’ 187 times in a row without taking a
breath.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And then, late at
night after the kids are in bed and you have chocolate and/or wine, you think
of your friends and family who couldn’t or didn’t have children. Or, even
worse, the ones who’ve lost a child and then you take back all those frustrated
thoughts and maybe even sneak into their rooms just to watch them take one more
breath.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I know that when people at work without kids complain about how
tired they are, you think, “oh my GOD, you have no idea. If only you could see
what my night is like.” But you don’t because you are a grown-up and a
professional and it wouldn’t matter anyway. You just do your job with a vague
sense of mom guilt and then make dinner and supervise homework and fall into
bed.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I know that when your husband comes home from work and you’ve
just finished yet another round of Stay-at-Home-Mom chauffer/maid/volunteer
roulette, you wonder if anyone will ever respect you again if you only wear yoga
pants for the rest of your life. But you don’t ask anyone what they think
because you are a grown-up and you own your life choices and it wouldn’t matter
anyway. You just take care of your household with that same vague sense of mom
guilt… and then make dinner and supervise homework and fall into bed.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I know you mentally berate yourself for your extra-jiggly
parts or your deflated parts or the parts no longer in the same place. No one should be
aware of fat on their back, right? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But I also know that when your kids were asked to fill out
their mother’s day lists they said you were “snuggly” or “gave kisses” or “hugs
me.” Which is kid-speak for “you are a soft place to land, to find comfort, and
to feel unconditional love.” Not one of them mentioned your back fat.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I know that you cannot let go of that time you yelled at
your kids for their behavior in a store or at their grandparents’ house and you
worry that they will remember it forever. And they might. But they will
probably think it’s funny and only bring it up to mess with your head. Because
children are like that.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I know that, logically, you recognize that your kids’ youth
soccer ability as having little to no relevance in their lives. But I know that you are also
ridiculously proud when they score a goal on the kid who was making a daisy
chain.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I know that you don’t really want or need any more
school-made cards or ornaments or works in clay. And that you are trying to
find a way to dispose of them without breaking anyone’s heart. Except that then
you sigh and think of how they will grow up and leave you so you put them
somewhere safe where you can look at how tiny they once were. Stupid school
crafts.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I know that every single day you love your babies. They
drive you crazy and they test your limits of patience and they destroy
everything nice in your home. And yet nothing lifts your heart more than a
pudgy hug that leaves handprints on your shoulders.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I know that when your child is sick your world stops. And
that when they are just a little bit sick, you revel in the sweaty head tucked
under your chin and the particular heavy weight of a child who is really,
really asleep.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I know that sometimes, when you think about the future, all
of the fears and unknowns of their lives almost overwhelm you and you feel
short of breath for a few minutes. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I know that you would give anything to ensure their future
health and happiness, but that you also know that isn’t possible. And somehow
it is all worse that you would gladly lay down your own life for theirs, but no
one is ever going to ask you to do so.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I know that there is no one on earth over whom you will ever
have as much influence as you do over your children.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And I know that that thought both terrifies and inspires you
all at the same time.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I know that you had no idea what you were signing up for
when you became a mom, but that you cannot imagine the person you would be
without ever having kids. I know that is true even though you have absolutely
no problem imagining being alone…on an island…with chocolate…and a drink with
an umbrella…for maybe a week or so.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I know that you are <i>trying.
</i>Really, really trying to do this whole mommy thing exactly right. Except
that there is no right and the fact that you’re really trying is the biggest
part of getting it as close to right as possible.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I know that you need other moms--for advice, for commiseration,
and just for a break from talking about <a href="http://disneyjunior.com/jake-and-the-never-land-pirates">Jake and the Neverland Pirates</a>. And every
now and then, you also need them to tell you you’re doing a good job. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So, here it is from me. You are doing a good job, your
babies think the sun rises and sets on you, and you are exactly what your kids
need.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Happy Mother’s Day</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
Best Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13065964759346952958noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2690271413637754639.post-4787207204501031792015-05-07T10:51:00.000-04:002016-01-26T01:25:10.552-05:00Why I'm No Longer a Teacher (and why you should care)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCn9B5yfy2beR2i7sijTFpfU9M3-m_l3LmYyyD6sn_X8D7zSN4R5twA7ipcsm9pKK_atiS5tqF7LHH6MgVEU4a_otvd9Yk7UQGGNvGbZpvB_aY1zi4yKAGFl1CMPuePom84K_908ptzn4u/s1600/apple.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCn9B5yfy2beR2i7sijTFpfU9M3-m_l3LmYyyD6sn_X8D7zSN4R5twA7ipcsm9pKK_atiS5tqF7LHH6MgVEU4a_otvd9Yk7UQGGNvGbZpvB_aY1zi4yKAGFl1CMPuePom84K_908ptzn4u/s200/apple.gif" width="167" /></a>The short answer, if I’m asked why I’m no longer teaching,
is that after a successful, decade-long foray into the teaching field, I failed
a multiple choice test about how to behave in a school and was banned from the
Fulton County Schools Teacher Applicant Pool.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The long answer is a bit more complex and echoes the
frustrations and fears of teachers all over the nation as our public schools
move deeper into the realm of high-stakes testing and dubious oversight and
application of those same tests. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I know that for most people, the level of interest in the
topic of testing in schools is directly related to the current involvement your
family has. If you have a kid taking a week’s
worth of tests, you care a lot that week. If not, it is yet another thing among a long
list of depressing news topics that feels too large to tackle while also paying
bills and feeding kids and basically living a life. It's about school...ugh. It's about tests at school..ugh. And it's about statistical interpretation and application of tests at school..ugh once again.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But I care so much about the state of our public school
system, and I so badly want people to have a better understanding of what the
Common Core/testing/opt-out debates are about that I am willing to share the
most humiliating moment of my adult life in an effort to explain it all in a
tangible way and to, hopefully, spur some of you to action.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are really two items currently at the forefront of educational
reform discussions. The first is the implementation of the Common Core
Curriculum that <a href="http://academicbenchmarks.com/common-core-state-adoption-map/">has been adopted by the bulk of the nation</a> in recent years. The
second is the series of tests that are being implemented with increasingly
higher stakes attached to the results of these assessments.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><u>National Standards</u></b><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Common Core, while frustrating to many parents
attempting to help their children with newly popular methods of solving math
problems, is not actually the devil. Standards are not a new concept and have
been used by school systems across the country for decades. Before the Common
Core, Georgia had the Quality Core Curriculum (QCC) with the Georgia
Performance Standards (GPS) as a kind of bridge between the QCCs and the Common
Core GPS. As teachers, we were taught that
the standards were the “maximum tested” not the “maximum taught.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The idea, of course, was that standards create a base level
that every student should learn in a given grade or subject and that the
teacher could then expand upon topics based on the interests or abilities of
the students. Unfortunately, the Common Core was developed as <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/schools/nochild/nclb.html">No Child Left Behind</a> and, later, <a href="https://www.rtt-apr.us/">Race to the Top</a> were implemented. These highly publicized
political programs required school systems to give assessments and report test
scores in order to maintain their federal funding. If the tests were going to
become such a large part of determining success, the standards needed to be
incredibly detailed and more rigorous. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The result is that, in an effort to create rigor, some
<a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2014/10/23/the-science-of-the-common-core-experts-weigh-in-on-its-developmental-appropriateness/">Common Core standards may not be developmentally appropriate,</a> and almost all of
them eliminate the option of any expansion or fluidity in the classroom. Any “extra”
moments of time are now used to prep for the ever-looming tests.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So, if it’s not the Common Core that is sucking the joy out
of teachers and students alike, what is it? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is the use of statistical data as the one best indicator
of student and teacher success that really has me frightened. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><u>Numbers—Are they lying to you? How would you even know? Can
you even trust them?</u></b><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My undergraduate degree is in Economics and my Master’s
degree is in Social Studies Education. The one thing I learned over and over in
my Econ classes were that statistics can be used to say whatever you want them
to. The numbers don’t lie, but the person telling you what the numbers <b><i>mean</i></b>
might very well be lying and you’d never know it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When the list of SAT scores by state comes out it always makes
the news. I remember one year when the state with the highest SAT scores had
fewer total students take the test than there were seniors in the one Atlanta-area
high school in which I was teaching. In Georgia, the PSAT is given to every
Junior and <a href="http://sfs.gsu.edu/scholarships-grants/hope-scholarship/">college tuition is free to any student with a B average who can get into a public university.</a> Students who may not really be contemplating college
are aware of the test and encouraged to try it if there’s a chance they could
continue their education. Comparing 400
college-bound students in one state to thousands of students who may or may not
be interested in a 4-year degree in another is pointless even if it makes great
political speaking points.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When <a href="http://www.gadoe.org/AYP/Pages/default.aspx">Adequate Yearly Progress</a> (AYP) was implemented the
incredibly wealthy school at which I taught was in danger of failing our AYP
and having our name printed in the newspaper as a failing school. Why? Because
one assessment category included the percentage of classes failed by students
on free-and-reduced lunch. Our school had fewer than five students on assisted lunch
which meant that if any of them failed more than one class, we were in trouble. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That same school had a visit from the Governor of Georgia for
the next two years in a row as a reward for “most improved SAT scores.” I
should note that as a new school, juniors and seniors were not required to
transfer from their old school to ours so our scores improved simply because we
added full junior and senior classes over the next two years.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My point is that, while these scores reveal some useful information,
they don’t necessarily mean anything earth-shakingly significant. In fact, they generally reflect the relative
success of the community in which the school resides rather than anything the
teachers or students are specifically doing. We might as well just make giant
signs that say “This is an upper-middle class neighborhood with well-educated
adults and you want to buy a house here.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><u>Testing, Testing, 123</u></b><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Much like school rankings and <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/2014/09/19/newsweeks-high-school-rankings-2014-two-lists-are-better-one-268691.html">Newsweek lists</a> (traditionally another random
stat based on number of AP tests given divided by number of seniors at a given
school) individual test results only share part of the story.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Tests in and of themselves are not bad. I have written,
given, and graded thousands of them. Tests are a tool. And like any tool, they
have their limitations. Politicians and real estate agents like test scores
because they are easy to understand and they make people want to live in those
districts. Teachers use them because they offer feedback and a way for the
teacher to assess his or her techniques for that unit. They also reveal some,
but by no means all, of the material a student understands and the areas in which
that student still needs to work.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
However, no test, no matter how well thought out, can be
perfect. A committee I was on once analyzed a test question where the correct
answer identified a Native American group as being “violent.” Although the 8<sup>th</sup>-grade students
knew that the tribe was a war-based group, they equated “violent” with “bad”
and “Native Americans” with “good” and so they did not choose that answer.
Their black-and-white thinking (which is fairly normal at that age) hindered
their ability to answer correctly. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One year I had a student called out of an Advanced Placement
(AP) exam to take a call from her mother even though the mom knew the student was
in testing. I found the student crying in the hallway in between sections of
the exam. She wouldn’t tell me what was wrong and she went back in to finish
her test, but she did not do as well as I projected that she would. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A test score can reveal what a child has learned. But it can
also reveal that a child is hungry, or tired, or confused, or worried. I’ve
taught children who’ve lost a parent and come back to school the next day. I’ve
struggled through lessons with entire classes in tears on September 11, 2001
and in multiple other years because classmates had died that week. These are
human children and their test scores are not who they are or even what they
necessarily know about the subject over which they are being tested.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So what does any of this have to do with my failing a test
and the current plight of teachers? Two things: the culture of testing is
eliminating common sense from our schools and our children’s test scores are
being used to judge their teachers. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><u>We’ll Let the Test Decide</u></b><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In my case, I failed because I did not understand the purpose
of the assessment. In July, 2013 I was considering returning to teaching after
a few years at home with my young children. Part of the online application was
a section of 25 or so multiple-choice questions about school scenarios. In a
moment of naïve optimism I thought that these questions would be used as
interview talking points or perhaps as a teaching-style assessment similar to a
personality test. As such, I consistently chose the answers that allowed me to
gather more information about each scenario since a large part of working with
the adorable messes that are teenagers is being able to be sensitive to their thoughts
and point of view.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Unfortunately for me, it was actually a test with a
mandatory minimum score that determined whether or not I was even eligible for
an interview. I didn’t know any of that until nine months later when a former
supervisor wanted to hire me to teach in her department. She couldn’t find my application in the
system and eventually, after about a month of back and forth nonsense, I got an
answer.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It took me googling news articles about the new application
process to find a name. It took me guessing at an email address based on email
naming conventions in the school district to find a contact. It took several
emails wherein I basically demanded to know how I, a fully licensed teacher with
an exemplary record for this same district, could be considered unfit for an
interview. I finally received a phone call (which made me feel good until a
less naïve friend pointed out that the district didn’t want it in writing). The
woman on the other end told me I failed the test I didn’t know I was taking and
that I had therefore been blacklisted from the applicant pool for a period of
one year.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When I again protested and asked that she call my references
at any of a half-dozen local schools she said, “it’s an automated process and
there’s nothing I can do.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That sentence it why I am writing this. The school district was not attempting to be
cruel and, to be fair, after my increased complaints to the superintendent and a
school board member whose kid I taught, the process has been changed. In fact, when I again had access to the questionnaire
a year later the example question I used to explain my complaints used my
suggestions almost verbatim—I wonder if I can claim a contractor fee?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>The problem is that, intentional or not, there are very real
human consequences to educational testing being used as a decision-maker
instead of as an informational tool. </b><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When a child has the possibility of being retained a grade
due to their score on one test, without the input or recommendation of his or
her teacher, we have a problem. Georgia is implementing the new <a href="http://www.gadoe.org/curriculum-instruction-and-assessment/assessment/pages/georgia-milestones-assessment-system.aspx">Milestones tests </a>and, right now, the tests are not being used as “gateway” tests to the next
grade. The possibility exists, however, and teachers and students are feeling the
strain of “taking the test seriously” on a regular basis.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They also create unintentional wastes of time (if you’ve
already taken the test that determines your success, what do you do for the
last three weeks of school?) and force teachers to make sure students practice
test-taking skills in class (instead of, you know, actually reading a book or conducting
an experiment or something educational). <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A child’s educational future should be determined by the child’s
parents, teacher, and school working in partnership. Test scores should be part
of the data that informs those decisions rather than the ultimate word on any
student. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><u>Your Survival Depends upon Your Child</u></b><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At this moment, teachers nationwide are struggling with the
idea that their students’ test scores could be used as part of their own assessment
as educators. Good teachers don’t mind reviewing their processes and reflecting
on what they could have done better. These are the things educators think of in
the shower and in traffic and when they zone out in church. Teachers want to
get their scores back and take pride in how well their students did and look to
see if they guessed right for each individual student. The scores are a piece of information that
can be useful, but again, <a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/05/13/report-finds-weak-link-between-value-added-measures-and-teacher-instruction">they don’t necessarily mean something significant.</a><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Every parent knows that learning is not linear. When your
children learned to walk, they’d take fifteen steps forward and then suddenly
fall on their backside. Occasionally, they choke and land on their faces. What
if your success as a parent were determined by how often your kid fell down
based on a projected number of falls gleaned from last week’s fall count? Did
the kid get new shoes? Did she have a growth spurt? Is he carrying his baby
brother by the neck?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You see my point. Students are children, even the teenage
ones. What they know or understand or can accomplish under the best of
circumstances is not likely to be what you see on a random Tuesday in May. It
might be. But to decide that a teacher’s ability to teach is reflected in that
number is not good science. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Like doctors, teachers have specialties. An oncologist specializing
in rare forms of cancer is far more likely to have patient deaths than a general
pediatrician. If we compare patient mortality rates, the oncologist is going to
look like a much worse physician even if he’s the one developing revolutionary treatment
options. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A teacher might specialize in students with reading problems
or teach English language learners. High
achieving students are not likely to improve much on a standardized test from
year to year because their scores are already incredibly high. And although most
schools do not actively “track” students into groups of like-ability classes,
it inadvertently happens all the time. Scheduling realities can box teachers in
and influence the resulting test scores.
For instance, if all the really bright kids are taking advanced English
1<sup>st</sup> period and advanced chemistry 3<sup>rd</sup> period and the year-long
electives like yearbook or newspaper are in the afternoon, whoever teaches 2<sup>nd</sup>
period history just got all the gifted kids in a “regular” history class. The teacher teaching history 6<sup>th</sup>
period won’t have any gifted kids or any students taking band. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
These are somewhat silly examples, but the reality is that
teachers are not doing the same job even when they are teaching the same
subject in the same school. There are too many variables to compare teachers to
one another or to assume that their test scores are primarily a reflection of
the teacher’s efforts. In addition, not all grades and subjects are tested and
that creates an even stranger component.
Is art irrelevant? What about World History? Or first grade? Georgia is
currently testing grades 3 through 8 and some, but not all, high school
subjects. What sense does that make?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><u>Teacher Teachers—It’s all their fault </u></b><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Somehow in this mess of testing craziness, the idea has come
up that in order to achieve greater student success, teachers need to be held
accountable and our schools need better teachers. And somehow THAT <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-teacher-prep-20141129-story.html">has translated into judging teacher preparatory programs based on the student test scores of the teachers they trained</a>. I can’t even begin to explain how silly
this is, so I’m going to give you a real-life example (with fake names because I did not ask for their permission beforehand).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Emily, Mike, and I all graduated with Bachelor’s degrees from
the University of Georgia and all taught public high school. Emily received her
educator training at UGA and Mike and I received ours from Georgia State
University. I primarily taught in suburban Atlanta in very affluent schools. Mike teaches in inner-city Atlanta and his school has been known to have a riot
or two. Emily taught in a Yupik Eskimo fishing village on an island in the Bering
Sea before teaching illiterate teenagers in Baltimore. I am just going to point
out now that Emily and Mike are better teachers than I am if for no other reason
than that they are still fighting the good fight and I have tapped out. But
also because they are clearly doing a harder job than I ever did. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There is no way that comparing our students’ improvement on
test scores could remotely reflect accurately on our teacher preparatory programs.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><u>What I Want You to Do</u></b><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I could go on forever about this topic. The company who makes
the <a href="http://parcc.pearson.com/">PARCC test,</a> the Common Core test being given to students in <a href="http://www.parcconline.org/parcc-states">multiple states</a>, is the same company that sells textbooks, practice test materials, and
teacher training to the schools districts in which their test is given. The teacher assessment tools and models (like
the assessment I failed) are created by software companies who also develop substitute
teacher management systems for the districts in which their products are used. It
is convoluted and frustrating and we got to this point in the same way you can
boil a frog. The water has been slowly heating up for over a decade and
dedicated educators have continued to keep their heads down and hope for the
best.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Politicians decided that our schools as a whole were “failing”
and that the cure was increased academic rigor and teacher accountability. I’d
argue that our schools were not failing—our society is. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>The root cause of schools that fail is poverty, not
standards or teacher accountability. </b><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
No one wants to talk about those issues, however, so we’re
creating a system that will continue to marginalize the poor while conducting a
rather elaborate and probably irrelevant experiment on the rest of the
population.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Meanwhile, teachers are sad and just want to be
given some small measure of the freedom and joy that got them into this job in
the first place. Teaching is a calling.
It is beautiful and meaningful and interacting with students can make even the
worst day worth getting up for. If we allow the proposed ideas about the use of
testing scores to continue we are going to lose every passionate teacher who
felt this call and wind up with a generation of educators who stay for 3-5
years and then get out before they lose too much of their earning potential to a job that
requires a degree, but does not treat its employees as professionals.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This week is teacher appreciation week. If you really want
to show the educators in your life some appreciation you will contact your national
and state representatives and ask that state and federal laws should reflect the following:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li><span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; text-indent: -0.25in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">Test scores should not be used with “mandatory
minimums” required to promote students to the next grade, at least until high
school. If a student fails a grade it should not be just because of one test
score.</span></li>
<li><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">Test scores or improvement on test scores should
not be used to assess teachers. Data from student tests should be used to
improve instruction, but pressuring teachers over their students’ test results means
too much classroom time is focused on testing rather than actual learning.</span></li>
<li><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">Teacher preparatory programs should not be
judged based on the test scores of their graduates’ students. There are far too many
variables for that to be relevant information.</span></li>
</ol>
<br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Feel free to copy and paste my words into your email if you’d
like to. Share this with anyone you’d like to encourage to take action. Our
public schools belong to us and to our children and to every child who comes
after. To make sharing your opinion
easier, I’ve included links to the
<a href="http://www.house.gov/representatives/">U.S. House of Representatives</a> and the <a href="http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm">U.S. Senate</a> so that you can find your
representatives’ contact information. Many high ranking politicians, like <a href="http://www.ed.gov/">Arne Duncan, the U.S. Secretary of Education</a>, are also on twitter and can be contacted that way. I added direct links to relevant Georgia
politicians for my district. You can also contact your local or state school board or superintendents. Your actual local school (and in many cases the entire school district) has no control over any of these decisions. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
One final note—I truly have so many more things to say on
this topic so if you had a question or comment that I didn’t address feel free
to comment, email, or tweet it at me. I’d be happy to respond.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www2.ed.gov/about/contacts/state/index.html">State Department of Education Links</a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Contact Links Specific to Georgia:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://tomprice.house.gov/contact-me">Representative Tom Price, Georgia 6th Congressional District</a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.isakson.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/email-me">Senator Johnny Isakson</a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.perdue.senate.gov/content/contact-david">Senator David Purdue</a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://openstates.org/ga/legislators/">Georgia State Legislator List</a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.gadoe.org/pages/superintendent.aspx">Richard Woods, Georgia State School Superintendent</a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.gadoe.org/Pages/Home.aspx">Georgia Department of Education</a></div>
</div>
Best Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13065964759346952958noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2690271413637754639.post-84786461301094629482015-04-25T17:51:00.001-04:002015-04-25T18:14:08.351-04:0050 States Trip #2: Mid-Atlantic States<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
Wanna make your minivan smell unique? Drive around with your
family of 6 for a week or so visiting whichever states are within your reach in
the time allotted. Our family has achieved this goal and then some. The minivan
will never be the same.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We recently knocked off 5 more states and Washington, D.C.
from our 50 states goal. We hit Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and
West Virginia. We also spent another night in North Carolina for the sake of
logistics.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Our goal is to see everything, everywhere so that we never
have to return to that place again.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
No, wait. That's not our goal at all. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Our actual goal is to see a little bit of everything and
encourage our kids to see traveling as one big adventure. </b><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And I think we're doing o.k. on that one.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In North Carolina, we visited the<a href="https://www.duke.edu/"> Duke University</a> campus and
relived a bit of our younger days (before children) when Jay and I lived in
Durham. It happened to be the day that Duke was playing for the <a href="http://www.ncaa.com/sports/basketball-men/d1">NCAAchampionship</a> so everyone we saw was wearing blue and staring at us because we
weren't. And also because we have a lot of loud children.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghSzMxeFTgVmRwgCI7TZGFBHgCIn5swwLgzDNYjn1ta6Qgbx0tjhodHc_WYF3f0MPkvgZbr2Qw4j3l3DNFGyBDwlPUOl5ik18hoE-TriqJTt1lb74PtVyY8UN1b5ZYGHt1uUAO7azhSZL8/s1600/photo+(88).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghSzMxeFTgVmRwgCI7TZGFBHgCIn5swwLgzDNYjn1ta6Qgbx0tjhodHc_WYF3f0MPkvgZbr2Qw4j3l3DNFGyBDwlPUOl5ik18hoE-TriqJTt1lb74PtVyY8UN1b5ZYGHt1uUAO7azhSZL8/s1600/photo+(88).JPG" height="200" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Boys and Duke Chapel</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We went to <a href="http://www.colonialwilliamsburg.com/">Colonial Williamsburg</a> and Jamestown Settlement in
Virginia (not on the same day) and I have to say that <a href="http://www.historyisfun.org/jamestown-settlement/">Jamestown</a> won hands down
for me. Not only do they have a living history museum (replica ships that
brought over the first permanent settlers from England, a <a href="http://www.nps.gov/jame/learn/historyculture/the-powhatan-indian-world.htm">Powhatan village</a>, and
a recreated fort), but their indoor museum was also really well done.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfdQeRUh7Yj86OqpT9fbh0ygzCkcXNonvL0xBm4j2Y5bMheD8dhCluid9Ur06Is9Txp4AJEnR4CdsGVnCDHEHgO1qxONVx4IS69zIvwMfPV5mPrtSk-jDCLQeF0z9dkuFHNR3Qn-fMWEw8/s1600/photo+(91).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfdQeRUh7Yj86OqpT9fbh0ygzCkcXNonvL0xBm4j2Y5bMheD8dhCluid9Ur06Is9Txp4AJEnR4CdsGVnCDHEHgO1qxONVx4IS69zIvwMfPV5mPrtSk-jDCLQeF0z9dkuFHNR3Qn-fMWEw8/s1600/photo+(91).JPG" height="200" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: left;">Learning from an original Jamestown settler (hee-hee, 'cause he's really old)</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Harry, our
four-year-old, has been telling every person who asks about our trip that
"all the Native Amewicans died and that made me cwy." He gleaned this
information from an interactive map that showed the decrease in Powhatan
settlements as the English settlements increased. You may not see that as a
positive, but I am a history dork and I do. And kids could be outside and they
had a musket demonstration that was a really big hit with our bloodthirsty
crowd.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSh5QbTu4Q2oQgbMK2VVHA1M6LkOnvWPuCrY-TCSqaIFHb29KQLR4onQSP8mAMB5KlVihYGRXoONgwYrSOqLvFv4zUSxj-SW8gWfkEPzYnRyQ5CGUTkERpgW3CBpN49XLWoXjd6cfhW5yc/s1600/photo+(92).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSh5QbTu4Q2oQgbMK2VVHA1M6LkOnvWPuCrY-TCSqaIFHb29KQLR4onQSP8mAMB5KlVihYGRXoONgwYrSOqLvFv4zUSxj-SW8gWfkEPzYnRyQ5CGUTkERpgW3CBpN49XLWoXjd6cfhW5yc/s1600/photo+(92).JPG" height="200" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jamestown Musket Demonstration</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Williamsburg would probably be more fun if you stayed longer
and participated in all of the historical reenactment activities (they have a
trial and a mob that starts the revolution, for instance), but with kids
ranging in age from 2 to 10 it was not that great for us. It was, however,
predominantly outside and involved running, which we always appreciate.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaVQ0qXxsjfztqETMkGEqqFbKz-x2S4ZxUPgUEDDDDeNzRoebVurdiZjZ2yki9sj9SWZdxKygtl0jxaUGXXat9_TEMPckdABAhlTCG8O5dqW1cX50K7IY1rtv4cuV7U_l8lLmdChyphenhyphenahHRF/s1600/photo+(90).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaVQ0qXxsjfztqETMkGEqqFbKz-x2S4ZxUPgUEDDDDeNzRoebVurdiZjZ2yki9sj9SWZdxKygtl0jxaUGXXat9_TEMPckdABAhlTCG8O5dqW1cX50K7IY1rtv4cuV7U_l8lLmdChyphenhyphenahHRF/s1600/photo+(90).JPG" height="200" width="139" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Governor's Palace in Colonial Williamsburg, VA</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In Maryland we hung out in the <a href="http://baltimore.org/article/baltimore-inner-harbor">Inner Harbor in Baltimore</a>,
ate some delicious crab cakes at <a href="http://mosseafood.com/crabandpasta">Mo's</a>, and toured <a href="http://www.nps.gov/fomc/index.htm">Fort McHenry</a>. McHenry's claim
to fame is that it was the site of the flag that <a href="http://www.usflag.org/francis.scott.key.html">Francis Scott Key</a> was looking
for when he penned the eventual national anthem. Although we were all taught
Betsy Ross's name for sewing the first American flag during the American
Revolution, it was really the War of 1812 and Key's era that saw the flag as we
think of it as a symbol of the United States.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWmURpPjgqW6mGMogigYFb4f-KdGnwgwXO5o1AbOOefiU-O6aFQp-OVMDY5y-ESKdVJob9GMsL_pCKBg-IhINjGqxIpUQZBL_phBb2-PqMTpMihUZP8iDBEtyrJJ62D3e5CJWO7qc24xgS/s1600/photo+(93).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWmURpPjgqW6mGMogigYFb4f-KdGnwgwXO5o1AbOOefiU-O6aFQp-OVMDY5y-ESKdVJob9GMsL_pCKBg-IhINjGqxIpUQZBL_phBb2-PqMTpMihUZP8iDBEtyrJJ62D3e5CJWO7qc24xgS/s1600/photo+(93).JPG" height="200" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Baltimore Lighthouse at Inner Harbor</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The short film at the fort was well done and made me feel
pretty darn patriotic. Although to be honest, it is not all that difficult to
make me feel patriotic. I learned that Key's grandson was actually held as a
prisoner in Fort McHenry during the Civil War for criticizing Lincoln's use of
force in eradicating slavery from the southern states. And, of course, I was
reminded yet again that I'm glad I do not live 200 years ago. Or 100. Or even
50. It was fairly cold and miserable and windy, but all the people we
encountered in Maryland were incredibly nice. And if I, a native Southerner,
noticed polite behavior toward others, it was above average at the least.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwJ60pn3zFG7bGTHWpSaXfvQyWEV82bv-4qXwu8Cm0fV3eb2-s3feyJCK8BWS_ffa6j1D44CoMXfBtdAURrWnTLFzsZJMfSYIljNUw3G7Wg84EmTMJm-bUYcMSn-PJlGk-JAmFTP_05HMr/s1600/photo+(94).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwJ60pn3zFG7bGTHWpSaXfvQyWEV82bv-4qXwu8Cm0fV3eb2-s3feyJCK8BWS_ffa6j1D44CoMXfBtdAURrWnTLFzsZJMfSYIljNUw3G7Wg84EmTMJm-bUYcMSn-PJlGk-JAmFTP_05HMr/s1600/photo+(94).JPG" height="200" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cannons at the ready at Fort McHenry</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We kept our tour of Pennsylvania to Philadelphia just so
that we could see the former capital of the United States and let our kids see
<a href="http://www.nps.gov/inde/learn/historyculture/stories-libertybell.htm">that broken bell.</a> The cold and rain (and occasional sleet) followed us into
Philly so our cheesesteaks wound up being needed for warmth and not just
delicious sustenance. The last time we were in the City of Brotherly Love it
was 95 degrees and I had to take a baby to the emergency room, so this was
still better than that.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh03K1bPViC_rBMvclHwSpPiaPF2pBBG-bFzdWTaHtV-Jien5KfoX5pv0ZajeravwERddJ9MsRBUOWBDKXrI-SWnx8ohPmSbhU3vAljBz70bAcJgybzgITtcgkeKYxLmSlhd2lgQqixIiLI/s1600/photo+(95).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh03K1bPViC_rBMvclHwSpPiaPF2pBBG-bFzdWTaHtV-Jien5KfoX5pv0ZajeravwERddJ9MsRBUOWBDKXrI-SWnx8ohPmSbhU3vAljBz70bAcJgybzgITtcgkeKYxLmSlhd2lgQqixIiLI/s1600/photo+(95).JPG" height="200" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Liberty Bell, up close and personal</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</o:p></div>
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We toured <a href="http://www.nps.gov/inde/index.htm">Independence Hall</a> and saw original copies of the
Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the U.S.
Constitution. We were also unfortunately asked to leave by the grumpiest park
ranger I have ever met. He was arrogant and rude and proudly told our group
that he had his doctorate, which we later learned was in Sociology, not
History. Our 2-year-old was rather loudly talking during the presentation and
unfortunately there is no other way but the guided tour to see Independence
Hall. It was embarrassing and not cool. Oh, well. I am perfectly capable of
explaining what happened in those rooms to the kids and we watched <i>National
Treasure</i> so we would feel happy about Philadelphia and Independence Hall again.</div>
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<o:p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMbUwCOLFGx2kgrCFeU42XG9t2VKa5Zel7ohNZ6HPYVn0cTXX-OXS8G0e3_SyJOPFDvOMpwSmvTlU7LCrFrKf_7O_JWNn9pEDtayrJDsfH2rI3vnLjM5NJpW0V0LJCp66g0BOsfA3kA2MP/s1600/photo+(96).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMbUwCOLFGx2kgrCFeU42XG9t2VKa5Zel7ohNZ6HPYVn0cTXX-OXS8G0e3_SyJOPFDvOMpwSmvTlU7LCrFrKf_7O_JWNn9pEDtayrJDsfH2rI3vnLjM5NJpW0V0LJCp66g0BOsfA3kA2MP/s1600/photo+(96).JPG" height="200" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Independence Hall before we got kicked out</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</o:p></div>
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And then there was Delaware. When we got this idea to see
all the states we joked about something that we could do in every one--take a
picture of a mascot of some sort or drink a local beer in every state or
something like that. We realized we just didn't know what to expect in each one
so we haven't really been doing any of that. I do wish we had tried to take a
picture of each state's welcome sign. Georgia's says "We're glad Georgia's
On Your Mind," which references a great song, but is also weirdly obvious.
Virginia's says "Open for Business" which feels vaguely desperate, as
though you need to be reminded that it's still there. Maryland's has every
color of their <a href="http://msa.maryland.gov/msa/mdmanual/01glance/html/symbols/flag.html">awesomely busy flag</a> and an arched shape and so many words I'm
not sure what it said.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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But Delaware. Delaware's is plain blue with white letters
and says "Welcome to Delaware." That's it. No motto or pithy saying.
No colors or flag. It doesn't even say "The First State," even though
Delaware was the first to ratify the Constitution. Delaware is not flashy. It
is absolutely lovely in parts and incredibly industrial in parts and practical
everywhere in between. When researching the state I kept running into the
<a href="http://www.dupont.com/">DuPont name</a>--the famous chemical company started in Delaware as a black powder
manufacturer when E.I. du Pont de Nemour immigrated to the U.S from France. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKZB4w9peBl4qSybSRQb2D-i6hCa1ilcxqkPVOh4bwelGD4fRpRF93ohjZbgLwJl5qlEjVhvP-NAD37GVXRUbFGBXWPH0sxiaEteTxFEKhk6U6kn0myinL1TdZqiCrq1D4xYzfewpG8tG-/s1600/photo+(99).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKZB4w9peBl4qSybSRQb2D-i6hCa1ilcxqkPVOh4bwelGD4fRpRF93ohjZbgLwJl5qlEjVhvP-NAD37GVXRUbFGBXWPH0sxiaEteTxFEKhk6U6kn0myinL1TdZqiCrq1D4xYzfewpG8tG-/s1600/photo+(99).JPG" height="200" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Water Power of the Brandywine River--used to make explosives by the DuPont Company</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</o:p></div>
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So we went to see the <a href="http://www.hagley.org/">Hagley Museum</a>--a former home and
explosives plant for the DuPont company. It was industrialization (company
village, large scale nuts and bolts and gears, industry titans) and peaceful
countryside all at once. The plant was along a beautiful river with the family
mansions high above overlooking the valley and out of site of the homes of
their workers and their families. They have a small explosive demonstration
down by the river and we got to explore outside some more. The museum staff
were incredibly gracious and proud of their state and we really enjoyed
visiting. We also went by the <a href="http://www.udel.edu/">University of Delaware</a> and Jay bought a <a href="http://www.fansedge.com/Delaware_Fightin_Blue_Hens_Snuggies">Blue Hen Snuggie</a> for his boss because one grown man giving another grown man a Snuggie
is only made funnier by the Fightin' Blue Hen on it.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwJ1t2UsnNONhrup6_HxXCc5_hR5cLzQdAOsXxoCI-YYkwOJBdRMZ1UF4LxxuQj3d5uMmnfe7l54CciAmqdEeS0E-jxLNBuN0EfMQCXd3Gtofw9f_d7V_ZuT26-lQyB26XuoEBDV6OMjaF/s1600/photo+(98).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwJ1t2UsnNONhrup6_HxXCc5_hR5cLzQdAOsXxoCI-YYkwOJBdRMZ1UF4LxxuQj3d5uMmnfe7l54CciAmqdEeS0E-jxLNBuN0EfMQCXd3Gtofw9f_d7V_ZuT26-lQyB26XuoEBDV6OMjaF/s1600/photo+(98).JPG" height="200" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Small Boy Enjoys the Former Home and Gardens of Rich People</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</o:p></div>
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After Delaware we drove west to West Virginia with the plan
of coming back through Washington, D.C. on the weekend when hotels are cheaper.
This meant we drove across Maryland and into West Virginia. The drive itself
was part of the activity. Flat lowlands give way to rolling hills covered in
mist and mountains hidden in the clouds. When West Virginia separated from Virginia there was debate
about how much of Virginia to cut off. Having driven through that area I can
see why.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivMhc9eij56xQershZeNfEq466lmdQC7jXrljIk00whKAVrzNNwiXUJS_YkCYIIzPVVj7naHk5aOYBtJPxnf97VcvXZXjvMwQccFa0FFJ-kqgV2GhUrNh7ro3VbWcOAQSAOsP9LCfk99fT/s1600/potomacmeetsshenandoah.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivMhc9eij56xQershZeNfEq466lmdQC7jXrljIk00whKAVrzNNwiXUJS_YkCYIIzPVVj7naHk5aOYBtJPxnf97VcvXZXjvMwQccFa0FFJ-kqgV2GhUrNh7ro3VbWcOAQSAOsP9LCfk99fT/s1600/potomacmeetsshenandoah.JPG" height="200" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Where the Shenandoah River Meets the Potomac at Harper's Ferry, WV</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The busy cities of eastern Virginia look nothing like the
hills and valleys of the west. In this one shot above you are within minutes of
Maryland and Virginia even though I'm standing in West Virginia. What West
Virginia has to offer is a lot of natural beauty and some pretty fun outdoor
activities that our youngest kids are just too young for. So we stuck to
driving around and visiting <a href="http://www.nps.gov/hafe/index.htm">Harper's Ferry</a>, site of <a href="http://www.ushistory.org/us/32c.asp">John Brown's ill-fated raid</a>
and so many changes-of-hand during the Civil War that the industry located
there was just abandoned after the war due to damage.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW0lh4Rty2UeqTtrYC11yvx3j8UItB3Uf5m5G3zF-XMWNz_Uze7ArXiNcUwu_Wj3Y2-u_ykkNlMH29yaWl8-kCvdt7Vorjljy0hSkXnfKU71qF4P5seCAHGgjotVqMJNjMOksi42mYslu_/s1600/jackandmommy.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW0lh4Rty2UeqTtrYC11yvx3j8UItB3Uf5m5G3zF-XMWNz_Uze7ArXiNcUwu_Wj3Y2-u_ykkNlMH29yaWl8-kCvdt7Vorjljy0hSkXnfKU71qF4P5seCAHGgjotVqMJNjMOksi42mYslu_/s1600/jackandmommy.JPG" height="200" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Clearly we pushed the little guy hard--he woke up in time for fudge</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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While on this exploration from Maryland to West Virginia we
stopped in Sharpsburg and saw the <a href="http://www.nps.gov/anti/index.htm">Antietam Battlefield</a>, site of the bloodiest
day in American history. My sons, excited to be out of the car, ran up to a
photograph on display and cut in front of an older man wearing an Orioles cap.
I pulled them back and told them to apologize and the gentleman said, "No,
no, let them up front. We want little ones to be excited about learning their
history." I could have hugged him and Maryland continued to impress me
with the kindness of its citizens. Good job, Maryland.</div>
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<o:p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8iqjDXdZSrltw3CsGaQM8GHrv_rq9-g7uJIeHRBrQSFMFMWq3XReHYxAdsSmdkrSG4p2en_NtDGKxo5lBmftI1KyFcdcS85uMjrR1VdWJbz1dm-IwEw0otEMsvSU015LI6IpopAHBXcYy/s1600/photo+(100).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8iqjDXdZSrltw3CsGaQM8GHrv_rq9-g7uJIeHRBrQSFMFMWq3XReHYxAdsSmdkrSG4p2en_NtDGKxo5lBmftI1KyFcdcS85uMjrR1VdWJbz1dm-IwEw0otEMsvSU015LI6IpopAHBXcYy/s1600/photo+(100).JPG" height="150" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Boy Inspects Civil War Cannon</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</o:p></div>
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Our last stop on this trip was to Washington, D.C. Quite
unintentionally we managed to be in D.C. during peak cherry blossom bloom at
the end of the <a href="http://www.nps.gov/cherry/index.htm">Cherry Blossom Festival</a>. Which means that we unintentionally saw
a parade. And were unintentionally near a public suicide (although we were in a
museum and the kids never knew about it). There were a lot of people, to say
the least.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtiMlTYCvsbHwBS2QZhTjyGNIyUuH_8WAfi4g22v8zqmencJ5WzorB1gj9JMnNc_IuOjoejwilxsbpGO27c7j8wOV3AEEq8_w2dfZPI7pyulMVrCg5OCXhaJxEUMQ3uNCPVDUoChh_LuKc/s1600/washingtonmemcherryblossom.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtiMlTYCvsbHwBS2QZhTjyGNIyUuH_8WAfi4g22v8zqmencJ5WzorB1gj9JMnNc_IuOjoejwilxsbpGO27c7j8wOV3AEEq8_w2dfZPI7pyulMVrCg5OCXhaJxEUMQ3uNCPVDUoChh_LuKc/s1600/washingtonmemcherryblossom.JPG" height="200" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cherry Blossoms and Washington Monument</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Jay and I have been to D.C. several times as tourists so we
stuck to the biggies for the kids this time. We saw the American History,
Natural History, and Air and Space Museums (all part of the <a href="http://www.si.edu/museums">Smithsonian</a>
complex) and walked all over the <a href="http://www.nps.gov/nama/index.htm">Mall</a>. We visited the Washington, Lincoln, and
new(ish) Martin Luther King, Jr. memorials and walked around the Tidal Basin to
see the cherry blossoms. Our weather was spectacular and our tired kids were
troopers throughout the whole thing.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu7bXeDZ74i0lsNda5x67wmRhyphenhypheny5vBhf4EMDSEDm5KHT0zpYnWppLOQsNTbYw1qHfDNJH9tZAn10A1VDgAGH3jHb49vWuz9QIgC3c74OyFJbmQiorhcYauIIj-ZMKlHpIW-Gj00G8e2EKZ/s1600/photo+(87).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu7bXeDZ74i0lsNda5x67wmRhyphenhypheny5vBhf4EMDSEDm5KHT0zpYnWppLOQsNTbYw1qHfDNJH9tZAn10A1VDgAGH3jHb49vWuz9QIgC3c74OyFJbmQiorhcYauIIj-ZMKlHpIW-Gj00G8e2EKZ/s1600/photo+(87).JPG" height="200" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our View of Lincoln</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Our final day we spent driving back to Atlanta from
Washington, D.C. I was worried about an entire day in the car, but we honestly
had a pretty good time and the kids were so exhausted from all the D.C. walking
that I think they were glad to be sitting down. Jay and I were, too, until we
had to get up in Atlanta and nearly died. And, of course, we got to see the
<a href="http://www.gbpw.com/peachoid-information">Peach Butt</a> in Gaffney, South Carolina. <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1856010/">House of Cards</a></i> may have <a href="http://www.goupstate.com/article/20130922/ENT/309221003">made it famous,</a>
but that thing's been mooning us for years. Here's to you, Peach Butt.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0vvcoFpdk5ABWJa9_6nktyBsqzXWErIgwtfmDhsiYngfJZ_0BPd8IZnNYLIjFOKiWiQypAope8QLhCYETOs8INAgMz-7h9VlhXVtzINSGiUqJ3cgeiGMpJCucrMenomiKglPqS2e8qMmS/s1600/peachbutt.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0vvcoFpdk5ABWJa9_6nktyBsqzXWErIgwtfmDhsiYngfJZ_0BPd8IZnNYLIjFOKiWiQypAope8QLhCYETOs8INAgMz-7h9VlhXVtzINSGiUqJ3cgeiGMpJCucrMenomiKglPqS2e8qMmS/s1600/peachbutt.JPG" height="200" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Pride of Gaffney, a giant Peach Water Tower</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We are now up to 11 states and D.C. crossed off our list and
Jay is making hotel reservations for our next adventure as I type. Hooray for
family adventure and happy travels to all.</div>
</div>
Best Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13065964759346952958noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2690271413637754639.post-23599039999234780182015-04-14T23:45:00.003-04:002015-04-14T23:53:05.589-04:00So I Started Homeschooling My Kids (Sort of)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Of all the things I've ever written about on this blog, I am most afraid of what people will think of me about this one. And that includes the time I wrote about <a href="http://imthebestmom.com/2010/08/best-mom-tip-102-cover-all-your-bases.html">flashing everyone</a> at my daughter's ballet class while breastfeeding and the time a <a href="http://imthebestmom.com/2012/04/best-mom-tip-172-cya-literally.html">bee stung me </a>on the ass.<br />
<br />
I'm afraid you'll think I've been drawn to the dark side of a crazy cult that has convinced me that my children might "catch sin" at the public school. (Not true, they are exposed to child-level sin at home. See how I said ass?)<br />
<br />
I'm afraid you'll imagine me wearing prairie dresses and sporting that spectacular hairstyle with the '80s bangs pouf up front and crazy long waves to my waist. (Also not true-I currently have a raisin-colored pixie cut and am wearing sweat pants. Although that does make me seem crazy in a different way..,)<br />
<br />
I'm afraid my decision will be interpreted as my giving up on the public school system in some way-- that by choosing a different option, I'm saying that I don't think my local schools (which have some of the highest test scores in the nation) are good enough for my children. This isn't true, either. I loved being a public school teacher and had I gone back to teaching this year, my children would be enrolled in the one down the street.<br />
<br />
I'm afraid that you will think that I am irretrievably damaging my children because they will not have field day or eat in a school cafeteria or some other aspect I haven't thought of yet. And I'm very afraid that you might be right about that one.<br />
<br />
Why am I doing this, you ask? And what does "sort of" mean?<br />
<br />
"Sort of" means that my kids attend a school called a "non-traditional education center." They attend classes two days a week in four core subjects--History, English/Language Arts, Science, and Math. There are no specials (P.E., music, art) and we are expected to provide our children with opportunities to do those things ourselves.<br />
<br />
They each have three different teachers--one for math, one for science, and one for both history and language arts. They complete their tests, present projects, conduct experiments, and learn new material while at school. At home they work on projects, papers, and all practice work. I grade all of their homework for accuracy and their teachers check it for completion. Their test and project scores then become the bulk of their grades.<br />
<br />
So, sort of. Not a regular public or private school, but not exactly completely homeschooling either. In homeschooling world this option is called a "hybrid" program and I had never heard of it until a good friend of mine began this option a few years ago.<br />
<br />
But, why? This is a little bit harder to explain.<br />
<br />
I have had a dream for as long as I can remember to one day travel extensively with whatever family I had. In my dream, we would leave our lives for a year while I taught the children through an online program or something and we would just travel around the world as we saw fit. At the end of this imaginary year, my children would re-enroll in public school and I would resume my job as a teacher.<br />
<br />
Actual life hasn't exactly gone that way. I had a couple more children than the average (by choice, on purpose, that close together, thank you for asking). I decided to quit teaching for a few years while my children are little and our childcare costs are prohibitively high. Thus, our household has four kids, one income, and not enough money to pick up and leave any time in the near future.<br />
<br />
In this last year, <a href="http://imthebestmom.com/2015/03/our-crazy-move-to-smaller-crappier-house.html">as we got set to move</a>, we had to make a decision about what to do with our kids' schooling for this semester. We didn't know if we'd still be living in the same school district or not, let alone the zoning area for the school they were attending. Given all the options, Jay and I decided to enroll them in this hybrid option for the rest of this year. They wouldn't have to switch schools mid-semester if we moved school districts and our family would get to experiment with a different kind of schooling.<br />
<br />
With only these few months behind us, it has been incredibly fun. We've gone on field trips to <a href="http://www.high.org/">see a Monet</a> while one kid was studying Impressionism (art and music history are included, just not actually making art).<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7fkc4J17TD9LZ9ATE4NmFWh8Sl6Mekw_LDspQDcunJIHPfCEV0yQ2hvDH-xu2A3pv_6nYySoB4c3vFsvStpfHJ2uXdFqI_7xNqYYa4J6t3CppJEV4G3vVz63y1RVD1Dp52fw7Wixa_4Y5/s1600/photo+(86).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7fkc4J17TD9LZ9ATE4NmFWh8Sl6Mekw_LDspQDcunJIHPfCEV0yQ2hvDH-xu2A3pv_6nYySoB4c3vFsvStpfHJ2uXdFqI_7xNqYYa4J6t3CppJEV4G3vVz63y1RVD1Dp52fw7Wixa_4Y5/s1600/photo+(86).JPG" height="200" width="149" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Boy Contemplates Impressionist</td></tr>
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We climbed the <a href="http://www.gastateparks.org/EtowahMounds">Etowah Indian Mounds</a> during a unit on early Native Americans. We are headed to the <a href="http://www.georgiaaquarium.org/">Georgia Aquarium</a> in May as a review of marine biology. And we'll be stomping through shallow ponds (with a guide) at the <a href="http://chattnaturecenter.org/">Chattahoochee Nature Center</a> this week.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEize9fjtl89bsI19kt0xmO_UwPou6JNfJwIxEpHe9oeOJWr70Arpzp7axIG54gu7hQDXakHW-ug1s0V6badW57t5Pu7mKXRdLnYqXQMcTiuds0Zil30Q-1xOEAkaq-jNZdCQk-itB3dk0Xx/s1600/photo+(85).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEize9fjtl89bsI19kt0xmO_UwPou6JNfJwIxEpHe9oeOJWr70Arpzp7axIG54gu7hQDXakHW-ug1s0V6badW57t5Pu7mKXRdLnYqXQMcTiuds0Zil30Q-1xOEAkaq-jNZdCQk-itB3dk0Xx/s1600/photo+(85).JPG" height="150" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Etowah Indian Mounds--Cartersville, GA</td></tr>
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I've gotten to see how our children learn and what their strengths and weaknesses are. I've enjoyed more leisurely mornings (we begin school at 8:30 instead of catching the bus at 7). I love that they're excited about what they're learning because there isn't any wasted time, really. And I certainly enjoy that this schedule <a href="http://imthebestmom.com/2015/03/our-50-nifty-united-states-adventure.html">allows us to travel more</a> and explore our country and its history.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2oEzEYuCxCzVd2NABnhNMm95G5_y2oJsl_BpElyFS_fOsvKh2nFgJh_auEiqI7vuZeF0B0cHyDxb3Es2q6iTTq1GPkKt9kKpgDLz31CBpe0q5Rv-fDQDMYYMCLPzJDhnTbPkPXq15SsL1/s1600/photo+(87).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2oEzEYuCxCzVd2NABnhNMm95G5_y2oJsl_BpElyFS_fOsvKh2nFgJh_auEiqI7vuZeF0B0cHyDxb3Es2q6iTTq1GPkKt9kKpgDLz31CBpe0q5Rv-fDQDMYYMCLPzJDhnTbPkPXq15SsL1/s1600/photo+(87).JPG" height="200" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our view of the Lincoln Memorial last week</td></tr>
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But I don't know if I'm doing the right thing. Maybe they need to learn something at traditional school that I'm not thinking of. I didn't particularly get a lot out of extra-curriculars (sports, clubs, saying the pledge every morning), but a lot of other people did. What if I'm denying them something they'd love? When I panic the most I remind myself that I actually have a Master's Degree in Education and am perfectly qualified to determine what they need to know and how well they know it. Also, I breathe into a bag.<br />
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But what if they're weird? What if they go back to school and people make fun of them? What if everyone else already has friends and they don't fit in anywhere? What if they never go back to school and they are launched into college as totally sheltered dorks?<br />
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And, at the base of my fear, is that I really chose this because it seemed fun. And it IS fun. Super fun. We're having a great time. But is that allowed? Are we allowed to make parenting decisions based purely on life enjoyment? Or should I be making MORE decisions based on life enjoyment?<br />
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FUN is not what our Puritan ancestors expected of us. FUN is not what most people use to describe their school experience. I don't know what I'm doing. I pray a lot. I ask the kids a lot of questions about what they like and don't like. I obsessively look up the <a href="https://www.georgiastandards.org/Common-Core/Pages/default.aspx">common core standards</a> for their grades to make sure I know what they're expected to know in public school.<br />
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But mostly I'm taking one day at a time and attempting to accept that "for the fun of it" might be an o.k. reason to do something I never really thought I'd be crazy enough to try. </div>
Best Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13065964759346952958noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2690271413637754639.post-24783240262075727622015-03-24T13:26:00.000-04:002015-03-25T00:09:05.449-04:0050 States Trip #1: The Carolinas<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
So I mentioned in my last post that we are going to spend 2 years visiting all 50 states. It will probably take us 2 years to get the lower 48 and then two separate, really expensive, trips to hit Alaska and Hawaii. Even knowing from the beginning that we will need to be flexible to achieve our goal, it was awfully surprising that the lesson was learned so very quickly.<br />
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We planned our first trip last month to head up to some mid-Atlantic states and see Washington, D.C. Unfortunately, the weather did not agree with us and one of our kids barfed in the hallway on the new carpet the week we were supposed to leave. The recovering barfer and the frost-bite inducing cold forced us to reevaluate our plans.</div>
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We decided, days later than we had originally planned, to just head to the Carolinas so that we could at least begin our adventure instead of cancelling altogether. We had no reservations or pre-planning, but since it was February we figured we'd be able to find a decent hotel and packed anyway. We got the car loaded up and all the kids buckled in and then realized we had a flat tire.</div>
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So then we went to <a href="http://www.discounttire.com/dtcs/home.do">Discount Tire</a> and got two new tires. The children thought it was awesome, they gave us money back on our two tires still under warranty, and they were done in 30 minutes. Yay, Discount Tire. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtvQKXzO7rbgIi2jSUiNxjIkclTIaf5e4w_1De2QAjOcICNV03xDhypP58WkbFstSpyYCikohuVsFeX11UHweT4wXWfRco8N2izwz4IxnXU0Muqj4EpSEvbON0z8V2ANMDesKFJDjV2ITT/s1600/photo+(75).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtvQKXzO7rbgIi2jSUiNxjIkclTIaf5e4w_1De2QAjOcICNV03xDhypP58WkbFstSpyYCikohuVsFeX11UHweT4wXWfRco8N2izwz4IxnXU0Muqj4EpSEvbON0z8V2ANMDesKFJDjV2ITT/s1600/photo+(75).JPG" height="200" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Giant machinery is always cool</td></tr>
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Finally, we were on the road and headed to <a href="http://www.charlestoncvb.com/">Charleston, South Carolina</a>. Charleston is lovely. There are Spanish moss covered trees and old cobblestone streets and a gas light district that smelled a little too much like natural gas for me to completely relax. We stayed right next to <a href="http://www.thecharlestoncitymarket.com/">the market that opens every day </a>and were able to walk everywhere we went. Hotels in that area are expensive, but we only stayed two nights so it wasn't too terrible.</div>
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Our first day we visited the <a href="http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/charleston/osm.htm">Old Slave Mart museum</a>, the <a href="http://oldexchange.org/">Old Exchange and Provost,</a> and <a href="http://www.nps.gov/fosu/index.htm">Fort Sumter</a>. I apparently fall far into the camp of "stark truth-telling parents" because it really didn't occur to me that I might traumatize the children with the history of slavery until someone mentioned it on Facebook. Anyway, we looked at photographs of small children in chains and actual whips and listened to personal stories that have been recorded by actors and it was painful yet enthralling. The children were most interested in the fact that families were broken up as children and parents were sold to different owners. </div>
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It was also painful because we have a 2-year-old and he is incapable of somber reflection. I don't have any pictures of this because human beings were sold like animals in that spot and it didn't seem like an appropriate photo-op for small white children. </div>
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I don't have Old Exchange photos, either, because that included a guided tour and during guided tours Jay and I spend all of our energy and focus keeping our children from destroying historic artifacts and knocking over strangers. It is like taking a litter of 3-foot-tall tiger cubs everywhere we go. Still, the history lover in me enjoyed both of these locations and I am glad we went.</div>
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We spent the afternoon at Fort Sumter, the site of the start of the Civil War. To get to the fort you have to take a 30-minute boat ride, which was a big hit with everyone. There is an indoor area on the boat so even though it was cold we didn't freeze. The fort itself is exactly the kind of place we like to take the kids. It is outside, there is plenty to look at, and it has historical significance. You're only allowed to stay about an hour because the boat will leave you (the park rangers actually rode back with us) so we didn't get to spend much time inside the museum on the actual island. Also, my son may be the only tourist ever to have left his winter gloves on Fort Sumter. He had owned them for one day. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0bfZKWMCap8igBVkPU7mqty1SXjfqwWXglFE1zxLR_2rVrK9if4f02H9UFGnsviPZ9DFrLRo6za7WlYLhsC_-pOvfMlL6LfDDquygjEY8-Gkr04RxS3gNsqKuRetGF7QkHQbJUAZPGEWJ/s1600/photo+(76).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0bfZKWMCap8igBVkPU7mqty1SXjfqwWXglFE1zxLR_2rVrK9if4f02H9UFGnsviPZ9DFrLRo6za7WlYLhsC_-pOvfMlL6LfDDquygjEY8-Gkr04RxS3gNsqKuRetGF7QkHQbJUAZPGEWJ/s1600/photo+(76).JPG" height="200" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cannons are amazing</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL4dpKdFAO7clNVflnfo9itBHwpG9MCgaGNSpYU9hQbytUNOx22fiUiaQg02UQq5L1pJt98mIKvxnosKNiuJoQK9IXMAvgMAzDRnqS9LzJqGizTWXDJXQ84jNnLIfoZv24TkvZmGzVoQvX/s1600/photo+(77).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL4dpKdFAO7clNVflnfo9itBHwpG9MCgaGNSpYU9hQbytUNOx22fiUiaQg02UQq5L1pJt98mIKvxnosKNiuJoQK9IXMAvgMAzDRnqS9LzJqGizTWXDJXQ84jNnLIfoZv24TkvZmGzVoQvX/s1600/photo+(77).JPG" height="200" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Family Ft Sumter selfie-may need a selfie stick</td></tr>
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The next morning we visited the market and said "don't touch that" 147 times and "no, you may not buy that" 412 times. The market is interesting for adults and apparently sheer torture for small boys. We also ate an amazingly delicious breakfast at the <a href="http://www.dixiecafecharleston.com/home.aspx">Dixie Cafe,</a> which was on <a href="http://www.foodnetwork.com/shows/diners-drive-ins-and-dives.html">Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives</a> from the Food Network. You should go there. </div>
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From Charleston we took this awesome bridge over to Sullivan's Island to go run around on the beach for a few minutes.</div>
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This wasn't really planned, but we were headed from Charleston to North Carolina and it looked like a fun detour to drive over the bridge. Once we were over, Jay thought we should see the Atlantic because our children either don't remember it or haven't ever done so. It wound up being one of my favorite activities.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyjZzQL5fNd4Uf5PMUWkftYhgsNL3vKzz-5AZllLPzFbqUC7gawoQrAnrUYN6flW4Mrp_YLQlIjYY2AZWZ1RnIXasw-I6Tw_iIfwXyz691pqlmNoFkW0Mvdn2yHi-3CmJMAkeg1Sw7w5lC/s1600/photo+(78).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyjZzQL5fNd4Uf5PMUWkftYhgsNL3vKzz-5AZllLPzFbqUC7gawoQrAnrUYN6flW4Mrp_YLQlIjYY2AZWZ1RnIXasw-I6Tw_iIfwXyz691pqlmNoFkW0Mvdn2yHi-3CmJMAkeg1Sw7w5lC/s1600/photo+(78).JPG" height="200" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Boardwalk to the beach</td></tr>
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We literally just drove around until we found a place to park near a public beach access point. We ran down this wonderful boardwalk, past a sign that said to watch out for coyotes, and down to the beach.</div>
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The path was surrounded by marsh and grasses and it looked like a secret passage to the sea. I'm sure it's a totally different world in the summer, but in February it was like we had our own personal ocean. Definitely worth the detour.</div>
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Here is where we totally short-changed North Carolina. I really love North Carolina. Jay and I lived there for a year and there are many places worth seeing. <a href="http://www.exploreasheville.com/">Asheville</a>, <a href="http://www.outerbanks.org/">the Outer Banks</a>, and the universities near Raleigh-Durham (University of North Carolina, North Carolina State University, Duke, and Wake Forrest) are all fun. Unfortunately, they were all getting snow and crazy weather, too. </div>
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We also were kind of run down from the terrible barfing of earlier in the week and we spent an extra couple of hours on the highway due to a horrific fatal accident that we passed on the way. It resulted in an RV on its roof with a car resting on top of it. I've never seen anything like it.</div>
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All that to say, we chose to go to <a href="http://www.charlottesgotalot.com/">Charlotte, North Carolina</a> because it is close to Charleston and about 3 1/2 hours from our house. We also assume that we will spend the night in North Carolina during other trips to places further away. That turned out to be a good decision because another kid started barfing in the hotel room that night.</div>
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But before the barf, we went to the <a href="http://www.nascarhall.com/">NASCAR Hall of Fame.</a></div>
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Full Disclosure: I am not actually a NASCAR fan. Growing up in the South, you kind of can't help but hear about races or big names in the sport, but I was totally surprised when my college roommate from Delaware told me her brothers were huge NASCAR fans. I learned that auto racing is actually quite a popular sport, <a href="http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Daily/Issues/2015/01/28/Research-and-Ratings/Harris-Poll.aspx">beating out basketball at both the professional and collegiate level for "favorite sport"</a> among Americans for the past several years. </div>
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We decided that a giant NASCAR museum was certainly unique to North Carolina and something that might be fun for the kids. And, honestly, it was a great museum. You get to climb on examples of how the track tilt has changed over the years from flat to over 30 degrees. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hanging on at 33 degrees</td></tr>
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We got to sit in a race car and pretend we were in the winner's circle.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">See how happy I am at winning?</td></tr>
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And I got a Dale Earnhardt hat because it was awesome.</div>
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Turns out that the NASCAR Hall of Fame is incredibly kid-friendly. It is already loud and you have to try pretty hard to break a car museum. Plus, there are several interactive video-game-like simulations throughout the whole thing. We finished up our evening with some really great Carolina BBQ, but then regretted that when the barfing began.</div>
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The next morning we limped home with a garbage bag in front of the poor sick kid, two new tires on the faithful minivan, and two more states crossed off the list. Next stop: the Mid-Atlantic states. </div>
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Best Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13065964759346952958noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2690271413637754639.post-2539246624791807222015-03-16T01:37:00.000-04:002015-03-16T10:02:41.866-04:00Our 50 Nifty United States Adventure<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Are you singing the song right now? I certainly hope so. If you're too young to know the reference, please watch this short video before going any further. You're welcome in advance.<br />
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Yeah, the 80s were as awesome as you imagine them to be. So much jingoistic pride and an evil Communist enemy to justify it all. Sigh. RIP, USSR.<br />
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Anyway, Jay and I are actually attempting to take all six of our family members to all 50 of the nifty United States. We have high hopes and a slightly indeterminate timeline. We are planning for most of them to be done in the next 2 years, but outliers (looking at you, Alaska and Hawaii) are going to be a bit of a stretch. And I've already been to both of them so, you know, tie goes to me.<br />
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I'll be sharing our trips and some pictures and such, but I thought I'd do an explanatory post that sets up our reasoning, our "rules", and our goals for these trips. So, first things first; what counts as visiting a state?<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVilyzppoJ13cT_OITG5VcHkb14zfkYW-_WrgF0bEGK4-JowDORelE7w6Zspx_VoXQxKqvtv4LWOLJj-Lvi0qqHZrRSxPcdm-zpSggMkDDOltON42sb7PjZNlD5W-8sI65BTpcHLbhyphenhyphen9cv/s1600/photo+(73).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVilyzppoJ13cT_OITG5VcHkb14zfkYW-_WrgF0bEGK4-JowDORelE7w6Zspx_VoXQxKqvtv4LWOLJj-Lvi0qqHZrRSxPcdm-zpSggMkDDOltON42sb7PjZNlD5W-8sI65BTpcHLbhyphenhyphen9cv/s1600/photo+(73).JPG" height="320" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our scratch-off map of the USA-how cool is that?</td></tr>
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For our purposes we must spend the night inside the state's borders AND do something unique to that state. Most major cities have an art museum, a science museum, an aquarium, a zoo, a botanical garden, and a children's museum. So unless that city has a world class facility (think<a href="http://www.moma.org/"> MoMA</a>, the <a href="http://www.sandiegozoo.org/">San Diego Zoo</a>, or the <a href="http://www.si.edu/">Smithsonian</a>) we avoid those types of attractions. Ditto goes for colleges and universities, although we may visit one if we really can't find a kid-friendly thing to do in that state (let's hear it for the <a href="http://nebraska.edu/">Cornhuskers</a>)! I have a strong preference for natural landmarks and historical sites so we will be focusing primarily on those types of attractions.<br />
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Secondly, we are not attempting a comprehensive tour of every state nor will we attempt to visit each state equally. It's just not possible given our monetary restraints, the ages of our kids, and the number of miles between states. I am fully aware that most states have many beautiful or unique characteristics, but we cannot see all of them, especially with small children. So, yes, although I would love to <a href="http://www.bridgewalk.com/">cross your crazy bridge,</a> West Virginia, the thought of doing it with my boys who have yet to develop a fully-formed concept of death makes be break out in a cold sweat. Which leads me to my next point...<br />
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We will be sticking close to major highways (and therefore, hospitals), major cities (and therefore, hospitals), and staying primarily in chain hotels (they are usually near hospitals). Before you think me a crazy hypochondriac I would like you to know that we have yet to go on a trip with 3 or 4 kids where everyone remained well the entire time. And I have <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2690271413637754639#editor/target=post;postID=5282288850523151557;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=59;src=postname">walked to an emergency room in downtown Philly </a>in the pre-dawn haze holding a baby who was having a hard time breathing. Don't judge me. Also, most places do not take kindly towards 6 people in one room and larger cities have more suite options. This is not an off-the-beaten path kind of adventure. Yet.<br />
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Because Jay and I have a deep appreciation and love for well-made food that we did not prepare ourselves, we will also attempt to eat something locally famous in every state. The goal is to do our best on that one--great restaurants are not always kid-friendly and new foods are not always compatible with small kids and long car rides. And as we all know, hungry children need food fast and I will not beat myself up if we eat at Schlotzsky's because it was what we could find in a hurry.<br />
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Some Logistics: We are not leaving our lives and driving around for 3 months. Jay has to work because we are not independently wealthy and we all like to eat on a regular basis. Instead, we will be using our flexible school/work schedule to take long weekends and 7-10 day trips until we are finished. The intent is for us to drive to as many destinations as possible. That is useful, because we can pack the faithful minivan with our road trip necessities (which, sadly, now involves Clorox wipes, a roll of paper towels, and garbage bags instead of trashy magazines and massive amounts of chocolate), but it also means more time spent in travel. Clearly we will have to strike a balance. If we fly, kids have to be able to schlep their own stuff. Actually, that holds true when we drive, too. We are not planning our trips too far in advance so that we can work around extreme weather, peak crowds, and Jay's work responsibilities. Clearly, we have more flexibility for spontaneous trips the more we drive.<br />
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So, what do we hope to achieve?<br />
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Well, selfishly, it is a personal goal of mine (and Jay's). I like games and somewhat arbitrary goals and this is a fun one for both of us. We also want to instill a love of travel in our kids and the joy of seeing and learning new things through personal experiences. Obviously, we are also excited about spending time as a family developing a host of those shared experiences that are unique to our family team. We do NOT expect our kids to remember every state and completely understand Westward Expansion or the Civil War when we are done. WE will remember and that is good enough. Also, I need them to love maps as much as I do.<br />
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Traveling with small kids is never efficient, never convenient, and always vaguely embarrassing (except when it is overtly embarrassing). Tour guides will always comment on or to your children. They can't seem to help it. In fact, guided tours are not usually our friend, but that's a post for another day. Strangers will mention that you "have your hands full" as they walk by, arrogant in their unencumbered saunter and ability to have meals and go to the bathroom WHENEVER THEY WANT.<br />
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But that's okay. Our kids light up at the thought of museums and monuments and road trips. And, honestly, so do I.<br />
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***In case you, for some odd reason, notice that I don't ever write about the few states we've already all been to, I wanted to list them here.</div>
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<li>Georgia--obviously. If you live somewhere else and want to cross GA off your list head to Atlanta (super easy by plane or car) or Savannah (easiest by way of South Carolina)</li>
<li>Florida--I have no idea how many times I've been to Florida. All of our kids have been to Disney World and to the Gulf Coast beaches, both of which are fun for families if you've never been.</li>
<li>Tennessee--lots of Tennessee is beautiful. Memphis, Nashville, and Chattanooga are all fun places. Chattanooga has a little more for kids (they can't hit the Nashville music scene just yet) and it is close (2.5 hours) to Atlanta.</li>
<li>Washington--This crazy far one is because Jay's sister lives there. We spent a week visiting her and saw Seattle, Tacoma, and my absolute favorite, Mount Rainier. We also got lots of stares and comments in the airport, the car rental place, and everywhere we went with four kids. One lady asked to hold my youngest for a picture to prove to her sister that you could, in fact, take a baby on Mount Rainier. I said yes. </li>
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Best Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13065964759346952958noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2690271413637754639.post-5797695397981010482015-03-12T23:23:00.001-04:002015-03-12T23:23:16.039-04:00Thoughts on Wallpaper...because it is vitally important to society<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE8LIDdRzYGNJA3LVPgzofGUYlCG8A9WdHHsENOZN8dyAkTNG-35ecdRd5m2F9rqj9x4fNIOuGVSJ6-jyXxy_JAatDcBDXK1i21YyrBed5NQITFUmavNH7RvgeL9uty1_suMCOd0WXgo88/s1600/photo+(70).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE8LIDdRzYGNJA3LVPgzofGUYlCG8A9WdHHsENOZN8dyAkTNG-35ecdRd5m2F9rqj9x4fNIOuGVSJ6-jyXxy_JAatDcBDXK1i21YyrBed5NQITFUmavNH7RvgeL9uty1_suMCOd0WXgo88/s1600/photo+(70).JPG" height="200" width="150" /></a></div>
O.k., it is not vitally important to society, but based on the reactions I got when I told people I was going to hang wallpaper in our new house, it is a decorating technique about which people have strong opinions. Most gave off a fascinated, incredulous, faintly disgusted air as though I had just announced I was leaving Jay to marry my cousin. (What's up cousins? I'll let you guys decide which one.) I can only assume that you all, like me, have had one or both of the following run-ins with wallpaper:<br />
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1. You have attempted to remove wallpaper stuck directly to drywall using that horrible round scraper thing (that just leaves 8 million tiny holes in your wall), the steamer that makes a soggy mess, and/or the terrible smelling "remover" that seems to have no effect whatsoever...<br />
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2. You recall that time in the 70s/early80s that your parents tried to hang wallpaper together in the bathroom and they got into a fight so loud you thought that Daddy might be going to live in a different house and then he kicked your Big Wheel. For instance.<br />
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The wallpaper I used was not like that kind of wallpaper at all. It is called "paste the wall" and you literally paint universal wallpaper paste onto the wall in a strip just a little bit wider than your roll, cut a strip the same length as the height of your wall, and stick it up there. The paper feels like really high quality wrapping paper or maybe butcher paper so it is easy to handle without tearing, pulling, or bubbling. You also don't have to do any soaking or "booking" like old wallpapers. You can re-position it without it tearing fairly easily. And, although I did not test this, my research said that it actually comes off in one piece which makes it popular with renters in older buildings in Europe. We'll see if that holds up when I get tired of wallpaper.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzs-8ssBDWcQS1huwHj7RRtb0eSn9VkUvWmx2_2cgAxUOhrjV-Q6HqXPu-Oq8H3wcogNjjQlEBqiDYX7S9ioIdoQzghbQKUL6ox_YvsQtCSjWXDqF-ld4nAgLqjOQsDrC6GX8N6Ae2t6JU/s1600/photo+(67).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzs-8ssBDWcQS1huwHj7RRtb0eSn9VkUvWmx2_2cgAxUOhrjV-Q6HqXPu-Oq8H3wcogNjjQlEBqiDYX7S9ioIdoQzghbQKUL6ox_YvsQtCSjWXDqF-ld4nAgLqjOQsDrC6GX8N6Ae2t6JU/s1600/photo+(67).JPG" height="200" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cutting a strip to length</td></tr>
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To be honest, I don't really know if this is a common U.S. product yet or not--I fell in love with an <a href="http://www.orlakiely.com/">Orla Kiely</a> print (Multi-stem Original, if you like it yourself) and I could only buy it from Europe. It was oddly difficult to search for wallpapers online--there are so many choices and so many I hated--and I didn't even know there were different types when I started. I found this <a href="https://youtu.be/Ajv8NeF9LC4">Youtube tutorial by these lovely British people</a> who can give you more advice than I could on how to hang it. They mix their paste up from a powder, but here in the U.S. it just comes in a resealable gallon already mixed.<br />
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Here are my two cents on how this little project went for me.<br />
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Tools:<br />
ladder<br />
paint brush (get a wide one)<br />
paint tray (to pour paste into)<br />
universal wallpaper paste ($20 at Home Depot or Lowe's)<br />
measuring tape<br />
scissors<br />
utility knife<br />
washcloths (wet to wipe off paste on the front of wallpaper, dry to smooth paper down)<br />
plastic straight edge (like a painters' edge--to get paper into corners and around trim)<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwLmqOvACwQhz-jFkZOVliMAaI9nYJ2UNFY9nanE1Mllyhv84DzRYuVpRcz6b4NoNjYvXIEPKmShmMOKXjUNcRJ7bPApmeWILRiXgR4ou_imrjXPYvZWKBU_9LBHkwkgzpozAU-fC2qV_o/s1600/photo+(68).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwLmqOvACwQhz-jFkZOVliMAaI9nYJ2UNFY9nanE1Mllyhv84DzRYuVpRcz6b4NoNjYvXIEPKmShmMOKXjUNcRJ7bPApmeWILRiXgR4ou_imrjXPYvZWKBU_9LBHkwkgzpozAU-fC2qV_o/s1600/photo+(68).JPG" height="200" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Making a straight edge</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivhwVEnK9UkU_0y3LLJIsio045OraRuHi-JJP5v_2WJEgSmfX0BSw1dD5Vwl5h3ajXafQ-sPYbg3GexVGA2YyHyjq4mDkYhtyaQ5SLGupnF9sO6rdqW5VLjq3hFjD7g2FZBjKxKtQGq4vA/s1600/photo+(69).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivhwVEnK9UkU_0y3LLJIsio045OraRuHi-JJP5v_2WJEgSmfX0BSw1dD5Vwl5h3ajXafQ-sPYbg3GexVGA2YyHyjq4mDkYhtyaQ5SLGupnF9sO6rdqW5VLjq3hFjD7g2FZBjKxKtQGq4vA/s1600/photo+(69).JPG" height="200" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Working around a door frame</td></tr>
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This really wasn't all that difficult. I told Jay it was like a cross between painting a room and wrapping an oddly shaped gift. He said, "so something I'd be really bad at." Um,,,yes.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZJRLRWFH5reyNkB8arg-_71d8UKynRuGqB0Cr2DD0gBdVdGaxV0Uk_B7lSuF-snjpcqFozeKF9Egsr_IhQ4PyIESPEbZQeK4AORgN3FDFCEl0rgz55L34YGQ_QrDRbE_j6KDK85ZoFjxD/s1600/photo+(72).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZJRLRWFH5reyNkB8arg-_71d8UKynRuGqB0Cr2DD0gBdVdGaxV0Uk_B7lSuF-snjpcqFozeKF9Egsr_IhQ4PyIESPEbZQeK4AORgN3FDFCEl0rgz55L34YGQ_QrDRbE_j6KDK85ZoFjxD/s1600/photo+(72).JPG" height="150" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sun that caused my ladder falling</td></tr>
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The hardest part was going up and down the stupid ladder I fell off of a few weeks ago while painting a sun on a ceiling and that I chose to put paper on all four walls of our small foyer. There was a door or doorway on every wall so there were also corners and door frames in almost every strip I hung. I think I hung just two strips that only needed trimming at the top and bottom.<br />
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It certainly helped to have a graphic print--the nature of the print itself makes seams harder to see. Also, working quickly made it easier to trim because the paper becomes more malleable (and therefore harder to cut in a straight line) the longer it is on the wall. One last tip, if you do all four walls know that it is not possible to have the pattern line up in that last corner so start in the corner you think is least important so that you will finish there with the mismatched print.<br />
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I actually really like it and think it would not be hard for most people, especially if you just wanted to do one accent wall. It is more expensive than paint (like 60-100 dollars a roll expensive) and you probably need one more roll than you think you need to match up your pattern. I ordered mine from <a href="http://www.wallpaperfromthe70s.com/">www.wallpaperfromthe70s.com</a> and it shipped from Germany and was at my house in three days. For some reason, the UK was unable to get me their wallpaper.<br />
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Final verdict:<br />
Easy to do, low to moderate expense (depending on how much wall you're covering), takes a few hours, and I love the result. Yay wallpaper!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp6EhlGzjKFi4J9doMB_ZTavIcy9yfzvQlibqyzlMlQpevQO7IWH92Op36ZV-F7-geuvEHra7tQ729Ob2v3BcLmx1Qq-pMpRNXNPfz2aT8KVoqPQnVpHuTirGvZnsI40N9PZWWnvO4gI_w/s1600/photo+(71).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp6EhlGzjKFi4J9doMB_ZTavIcy9yfzvQlibqyzlMlQpevQO7IWH92Op36ZV-F7-geuvEHra7tQ729Ob2v3BcLmx1Qq-pMpRNXNPfz2aT8KVoqPQnVpHuTirGvZnsI40N9PZWWnvO4gI_w/s1600/photo+(71).JPG" height="200" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Final Product</td></tr>
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Best Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13065964759346952958noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2690271413637754639.post-9482949117254786312015-03-05T00:04:00.001-05:002015-03-05T00:21:15.217-05:00Our crazy move to a smaller, crappier house<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxt8S73g8df1LX7bXTIah6GJJviimBcoIqoqMbEetfiZlKfuTBUsMNhOQl7wU7YvPQ3FYIyg34PUyFVeDMP8CwLyW-j50Jud_Rfi9S6swVgppHDCap5Gq4Yf-pAC6EvJmnfnyAKwih8PpD/s1600/photo+(66).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxt8S73g8df1LX7bXTIah6GJJviimBcoIqoqMbEetfiZlKfuTBUsMNhOQl7wU7YvPQ3FYIyg34PUyFVeDMP8CwLyW-j50Jud_Rfi9S6swVgppHDCap5Gq4Yf-pAC6EvJmnfnyAKwih8PpD/s1600/photo+(66).JPG" height="200" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Old House, New House. </td></tr>
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So I moved. It's been about a month and it has not been that awesome of a month. I have really dragged my feet (drug my feet?) about writing this post because what I have to say is rambling and weird and doesn't make a lot of sense. So I'll just start and you can see if you care to read to the end.<br />
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Jay and I get antsy. I don't know if it's because we grew up with some chaos in our lives or what, but we can only go about two years before the "let's do something different" monster starts to rear its head. We've moved, changed jobs, left the country, had babies, quit careers, and gone to grad school. Because the same is boring and we, like I said, get antsy. It feels like a physical weight that might suffocate me if I don't find some new mountain to climb fast.<br />
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Since our youngest turned two last summer it was about time for something else before we found ourselves with yet another kid. We wanted something harder and more challenging--I think it makes us feel alive. I looked into returning to teaching, but that didn't work out (and if I get up the courage to bare my soul I will write about that soon) and so we started pondering what we wanted to do differently. The idea really became "if we don't have a known path to take, what unknown path could we blaze together?"<br />
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Thus began some months of prayer and discussion and dreaming that led us down ideas of international travel or living, selling everything and roaming around for a year, and of homeschooling our kids during our travels. It was all crazy and expansive and incredibly exciting. But we had to make some decisions--where are we going, what are we doing, and are we going to do anything at all?<br />
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As we prayed we felt God calling us to live more closely, more freely, and more simply. Jay and I had no idea what that meant in any practical way. We began to compare what we were spending our time and money on to those goals of "closer, freer, simpler" and one of the things that we realized was that we had a big house with a lot of stuff in it and not all that much time together. So our first step became to sell our house and get rid of some of our stuff.<br />
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And we did sell the house in about 3 days and then we had to find somewhere to go and it has all been totally whirlwind and chaotic. Which I kind of like, but it also freaks me out. I am complex.<br />
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I learned how to sell furniture on Craig's List and that Goodwill eventually gets tired of seeing you. I learned about proper house framing technique (apparently our former house had a leaning chimney--who knew?). I learned that most smaller construction of the past 20 years doesn't come with much of a yard.<br />
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And then we packed up all the stuff we had left and moved our four kids into an older house that is about a thousand square feet smaller than our last one. <br />
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We are certainly, objectively, closer. There isn't all that much room. We have clearly simplified our possessions, but I still have boxes of toys that are sitting in the garage. Which, by the way, might be too short for the minivan. Freer? Well, we have a great back yard where the children roam and play more freely than they did. And this house cost us less than our old one so our finances are freer for our dreams of travel.<br />
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We also used the disruption of moving to experiment with a new school for our kids. They go to classes twice a week for instruction and tests and then do their practice, homework, and projects at home the other three days. Again, definitely closer and freer--not sure about simpler, but we're new to this. We are planning on using the more flexible schedule to achieve our first travel goal of visiting all 50 states as a family (which I will also write about soon). <br />
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But even though I am glad to be on this journey, and would absolutely choose it again, it has been hard. The kitchen cabinets are 40 years old and you can tell every time you open a drawer. My bathroom is tiny and I don't know where to put my contacts. The laundry room is in the garage and it is cold--except in August when I may die of heat stroke in there. The house still smells like old people somehow. And although our mortgage is less it feels like we are hemorrhaging cash paying for things like door knobs (there were 4 different kinds of knobs on 12 different doors and I could not handle it) and the benefits of insulation.<br />
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It's kind of hard to explain how we got here, but it involved a lot of deeply earnest prayer and fasting and a complete letting go of this crazy adventure. <br />
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Because that's what this whole life is; one bizarre and overwhelming adventure where we are called to do good and glorify God.<br />
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Oh, and I do love adventure. Adventure is why we randomly moved to another state once upon a decade ago. It is why we wandered around Europe one summer. It is how we wound up with four kids. It is what we want our children to see their lives as instead of as something to be slogged through complaining about politicians and how busy we all are.<br />
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I have had moments and even entire days when I've said, "Lord, is this the dumbest decision we've ever made?" (Side note, the actual dumbest decision we've ever made is a toss up between attending a time share sales pitch only to discover we were too young to claim the free TV prize and purchasing a Toyota 4Runner that was possessed and randomly locked and unlocked its own doors.)<br />
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I have been confronted with my own arrogance and materialism when I realized I care what other people think of my new house. I feel so much pressure to have something special or Instagram worthy to show off before I have people over. I hate it when I have to admit I am shallow.<br />
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I don't think it's the dumbest decision we've ever made, but it is scary and stretching and growing and that is always at least a little painful.<br />
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So I moved. To a smaller house in the hopes of living a bigger life. </div>
Best Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13065964759346952958noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2690271413637754639.post-22299830144769674772014-12-11T14:49:00.000-05:002014-12-13T21:55:04.091-05:0010 Time-Saving Tips for the Holidays<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Anyway, I'm back with a post that is going to more than make up for my absence. I am going to remove that harried/stressed/overwhelmed feeling from your December. So, without further ado, my top ten time-saving tips for the holidays!<br />
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1. Stop making gift wrapping so ridiculously hard. There are so many ideas for how to wrap gifts and make name tags that if you Google "gift tag ideas" it gives you about 24 million results. Really. I'll wait while you check. Twenty-four million ways to put a name on something. And they are adorable. Look at this one from <a href="http://www.marthastewart.com/276334/holiday-gift-tags-and-labels/@center/307035/santas-workshop">Martha Stewart.</a><br />
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Who wouldn't want to cut out tiny little mittens and stockings and then glue rickrack onto them and tie it all to packages with attractive grosgrain ribbon? And that's great if you want to to do that. But do you know what <i>else</i> you can do with wrapping paper? You can write on it. Because that's why paper was invented. So buy some paper and wrap some gifts and then write names on them in magic marker. See? This one is for my mom. She will know it is for her because I wrote "Mom" on it.<br />
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2. Get rid of your <a href="http://www.elfontheshelf.com/">Elf on the Shelf.</a> Last year I recommended that you <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2690271413637754639#editor/target=post;postID=2245091857838756636;onPublishedMenu=posts;onClosedMenu=posts;postNum=16;src=postname">kill Santa</a> and this year I am freeing you from your elvish bondage. It's not as though this is some age-old tradition harkening back to the Old Country. This is a fairly amusing book with a really good marketing team. Tell your kids that you can't afford an elf. Tell them that the elf left to pursue other passions. Tell them that you just don't want any more creatures to take care of in your house because kids are hard enough. Tell them that if they had been your age when the movie <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094862/">Child's Play</a> came out they, too, would know that this is clearly the kind of toy that tries to kill you in your sleep and you had to get rid of it for the safety of the entire family. Ta-da! No more frantic last-minute elf hijinks.</div>
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3. Create a "tradition" where your kids go get ready for bed and then come back to the family room for the Advent Calendar. Use the 5 minutes between when they walk away and before someone starts crying to put something in the Advent Calendar for that night. We rotate between handfuls of marshmallows, Hershey's kisses, notes I write on index cards that live in the kitchen, and sometimes a bunch of Pirate's Booty. Let other people have hand-crafted Advent cards strung artfully from the doorway--you have Pirate's Booty.</div>
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4. Give up on Christmas cards. Sometimes I totally nail Christmas cards. Look at this one from two years ago.</div>
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It completely captured the essence of our family with a new baby and a bunch of other kids. See how happy my husband is? I thoroughly enjoyed sending that one out and it was not stressful at all. But this year? I don't have a family picture more recent than Easter, we are moving in January and have nowhere to live, and I still haven't shipped our gifts out to Jay's sister. So no cards. I will get to it in March when I send out new address cards instead. I'm pretty sure our friends and family will survive without seeing what we all look like this year. If I have time and enough old cards left over I may just send these out again and tell people to imagine everyone a little bigger. My husband's boss is sending out a card with a stock photo of someone else's kids on it instead of trying to get a family picture. All good ideas and way more fun than worrying about getting that perfect family shot on that perfect card.</div>
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5. Don't bake things. You know who's good at baking? The Publix bakery by my house. And they will give me delicious baked goods made that day in exchange for money. Voila.</div>
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6. Give teachers money. Trust me, that is all they want. This also applies to anyone in your life you sometimes "buy little things for and set aside in case you need a last minute gift." No one on earth wants something that is of so little value to you that you buy extras and stick them in a closet. Give them money or nothing at all. Stop the charade. </div>
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7. Stay home. I give you permission to stop going to every single school event your kids have. If you have a problem saying no, just take some younger kids to the next school-age kid winter party and you will never be asked to help throw the class party again. I speak from experience. </div>
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<b><i>But Sally, you say, these are all the FUN things about the holidays that I WANT to do. If I ignore all of these things, I won't feel Christmas-y and it will be just another cold month!</i></b></div>
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You are right. And now it is time for a hard truth: Unless you have that magic thing that Hermione used in Harry Potter that allowed her to go back in time to take extra classes (what kind of school <i>allows</i> that, Hogwarts??!!) you will not have enough time to do all of these fun extras and all of the other things you usually do. </div>
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<b><i>Which only leaves one other option: do a much worse job at your usual tasks.</i></b></div>
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8. Stop mopping the floor. There is a lot of floor in my house. Most of it is sticky. During the month of December I make myself content with sweeping up visible dirt/leaves/old food the day someone is coming over. Then, about half an hour before guests arrive, I give my kids a canister of Clorox wipes and tell them to wipe up anything not floor colored. I get to pretend that I cleaned the floor, the kids are kept out of my hair before people come over, and it is appropriate to dim the lights and use candles at this time of year. So let's make a pact--we all stop mopping the floor and no one looks down when we go to each others' houses.</div>
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9. As-needed laundry. For the next two weeks I will not do laundry until it is required. When a kid runs out of underwear, I will wash all the underwear. When a kid runs out of pants, I will wash pants. I do 7-14 loads of laundry a week depending on how many beds need their sheets changed. Not in December. I suggest you wear a dress shirt with those sweatpants because I'm not washing anything until I have to.</div>
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10. Only make things in the crock pot. Last night I made enough chili to feed a family at least five times our size. Some of our kids don't even like chili, but we will now eat it every day for a week. Next week is roast beef and the week after is barbecue chicken. Get used to it, kids. </div>
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So there you go. Ten ways to give yourself a little extra breathing room for the next few weeks. And if it helps, you can know that I am doing all ten simultaneously and that there is no reason for you to feel slack because you are not alone. In fact, there are quite a few other things I'm doing a worse job at right now, but even I have my pride. </div>
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Merry Christmas! Also, go eat some chocolate. I know I will. </div>
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Best Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13065964759346952958noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2690271413637754639.post-88437675964376756102014-10-08T13:35:00.000-04:002014-10-08T13:35:07.787-04:00Happy Kids are Not My Goal<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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When parents get together and the conversation turns to the choices we're all making with our kids and how we might react to certain fears or frustrations, someone will usually say "I just want them to be happy."</div>
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I've even said it myself. </div>
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As I'm growing this family and tweaking and tightening our interpretations of our convictions about how to raise our kids, I've come to the conclusion that I don't really "just want them to be happy."</div>
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I want them to be passionate and empathetic. I want them to be devoted to their families and spouses even when it doesn't feel "happy." I want them to know purpose and meaning and be the kind of people who leverage their influence and resources for the good of the world around them. I want them to be fulfilled. "Happy" is a pale substitute for joy. </div>
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Many years ago I was a cross country coach at the high school at which I taught history. At practice one night, a few kids got into a competition about who had the biggest house. This was a very affluent area and many of my students lived in what could easily be called mansions. The kid who "won" biggest house finally silenced everyone else with a simple question: "Which one?"</div>
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From my observations as their coach and teacher, many of these kids had parents who were striving to make them happy. Their parents were at every meet, they volunteered in the school, they provided nice cars and clothes and technology--these parents were trying very hard to raise happy children. That particular kid's parents (the "which one" kid) had gone through a rather contentious divorce with his mom remarrying a well-known attorney and both of the houses in which he lived were impressive. But he didn't seem all that happy.</div>
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I interrupted their conversation and told them that bragging about their houses was like bragging about being naturally fast. You didn't do anything to earn that privilege--you've just managed to not die so far. It would be impressive if you improved your time or worked to make yourselves financially independent from parents who could obviously help you out for many years to come. </div>
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That got me some blank stares and we moved on with practice when the other coach (who knew way more about running than I ever will) showed up and started putting them through speed drills. Bwa-ah-ah! Take that, snotty rich kids.</div>
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I didn't have any children at the time and my Honda Civic didn't compare to the rides these kids were rolling so I just assumed I would learn more about raising happy kids as I got older. And I have. I've learned that 20-something-year-old me was right. Trying to make kids happy usually winds up making them selfish, myopic, and hyper-competitive.</div>
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Happiness is fleeting and unpredictable. Ask any parent who has bought the perfect pediatrician-recommended plaything for their toddler's birthday only to have them play with it for 1.2 seconds and then fall in love with the box. And also a pair of old socks.</div>
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Trying to make kids happy results in families who are over-scheduled because Junior "loves baseball." Unfortunately, he also loves basketball, Lego robotics, and Cub Scouts so every night is spent eating in the car and every morning is spent dragging him out of bed.</div>
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Trying to raise happy kids causes parents to shift their own lives in an effort to ease the paths of their children. It sounds nice, but we are robbing kids of the opportunity to learn how to deal with pain and fear and disappointment--all necessary to become adults who have a positive impact on the people and places around them. </div>
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Whatever benefits we think we are giving our kids by trying to provide the most enriching opportunities that offer the most stimulation and excitement, we are undoing them by failing to teach children that joy is not born out of your circumstances. It is part of who you are, how you view the world, and what choices you make with what you are given.</div>
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I would say that my childhood was "happy", but our circumstances were not. My father struggled with a poorly-managed mental illness from my preschool years until after my marriage. My mother was physically ill throughout my middle school years. These factors made money incredibly tight and a constant source of stress. Yet, my parents taught me to pray. They taught me to love the moments of togetherness and the adventures we shared together. I learned, at a very deep level, that joy comes from your relationships with God and with those around you. </div>
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There is no way we can raise adults who have learned how to be joyful in their lives if we model for our children families where the kids' activities trump the parents' interests, parent/child relationships trump marital ones, and work is done for the purpose of giving our kids "the best."</div>
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Children raised with those examples will be easily bored in their own marriages, unfulfilled and misguided about the purpose of their careers, and destined to great disappointment when they finally realize that no one thing will actually ever make them happy.</div>
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So, happy, not so much. I just want them to have joy. </div>
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Best Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13065964759346952958noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2690271413637754639.post-42848782937396888482014-09-28T13:07:00.001-04:002014-09-28T13:07:31.812-04:00Why My Boys Play with Guns<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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O.k., clearly I mean toy guns. I do not have small children running around with loaded firearms. Not even I'm that distracted of a parent. <br />
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No, I'm talking about how we let our boys use imaginary/toy weapons in their pretend play. When our only child was a daughter, this was a non-issue. I'm not prepared to argue nature vs. nurture on the topic, but our reality was that our girl was the princess-iest princess you ever saw at the age of 4 and each one of our boys has turned a wrapping paper roll into a sword suddenly and without warning. <br />
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I am not all that girly of a girl and my husband, while a sports fanatic, is a pretty mild-mannered software consultant. I am not traipsing around in heels and pearls and he isn't walking through the living room with a rifle thrown over a shoulder. And yet our kids, especially between the ages of 3 and 6, have been some of the most sexist people on the planet. Everything is about what "boys" or "girls" do. Even when we explain that boys can wear whatever color they want or that girls can also be President (theoretically, thus far), they are still really interested in what they perceive to be boy or girl activities. In little boy world, that includes a lot of fighting bad guys.<br />
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At first I was kind of horrified. My sweet, lovable oldest boy began shooting at random things with his fingers. We did not own any kind of toy weapons (not even water guns) and the only TV he watched was on PBS. Where in the world did finger guns come from? I still don't know, but that really didn't turn out to be the point.<br />
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I had a few fears. I was worried that if they had toy guns they might mistake a real gun for a toy somewhere (a relative or friend's house) and think that seemed like a just another toy. I was worried that all this sword fighting and shooting bad guys might lead them to be overly aggressive or angry or...I don't know, mass-murder-y. I was worried that they would get in trouble at school for pretending to shoot someone.<br />
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After a while, and the addition of a couple more boys, I began to realize some answers to my fears. Weapons are going to be interesting to little boys whether or not I have any toy ones in the house. They imagine weapons out of everything. If you look closely at the picture above you can see that the boys are armed with binoculars, a wiffle bat, and a lavender <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001Q8U39I/?tag=googhydr-20&hvadid=34241715107&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=5522846549361269422&hvpone=28.95&hvptwo=17&hvqmt=b&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_4jlddvudzv_b">Little Tykes golf club</a>. I needed to talk about gun safety even if I have no intention of ever owning a weapon because things that shoot projectiles are just inherently cool to most guys. Hence <a href="http://youtu.be/QZGVCYuF04k">potato cannon competitions</a>.<br />
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I became a lot less worried about raising crazy anti-social leaders of a private militia when I listened to how they play. They are always going after "bad guys." They pretend to be policemen or soldiers or "good pirates" (although I have explained that there is no such thing, they are brainwashed by <a href="http://disneyjunior.com/jake-and-the-never-land-pirates">Jake and the Neverland Pirates</a>). I know that there are complex geo-political issues that prevent all soldiers from doing "good" work. I know that there are bad cops and systemic socio-economic disparities that are reinforced by some current methods of police work. But my boys don't know any of that.<br />
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They believe that "good" countries fight "good" wars and that because policemen are supposed to be the good guys, they are good men who do not make mistakes. They will learn shades of gray as they age, but for now they are playing heroes. Just like they pretend to be the Green Lantern and the Flash, they pretend to rid the world of evildoers by arresting them or invading with tanks made out of cardboard boxes. Do I really want to discourage their desire to pursue justice?<br />
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Fortunately, my school fear has, so far, turned out to be not as big of a deal as I thought. My boys have been told not to play pretend guns at school. They don't really understand why, but they don't understand a lot of grown-up rules and so they accept it.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmmHtOjU0FNuuh_JCLCTXkWt6hGABT6HZmj5y10z73ouwK3rfhfpgPeKUEKfzYW4oZZdr5wBUEv-8JESmtSodv4inVMidvZo6FBNcsIlL3fiBo8oCVFv6ee_q7dMCEN8Fm6zfjZHeOP010/s1600/photo+(39).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmmHtOjU0FNuuh_JCLCTXkWt6hGABT6HZmj5y10z73ouwK3rfhfpgPeKUEKfzYW4oZZdr5wBUEv-8JESmtSodv4inVMidvZo6FBNcsIlL3fiBo8oCVFv6ee_q7dMCEN8Fm6zfjZHeOP010/s1600/photo+(39).JPG" height="200" width="149" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Policeman Self Portrait</td></tr>
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One of my guys wants to be a policeman when he grows up (doesn't really suit his temperament, but I don't have the heart to tell him). His Kindergarten art project was to make a picture of himself dressed as his future career. You can see in his picture that he has handcuffs (green blob on the left), a nightstick (brown hot-dog thing), a walkie-talkie (green rectangle with dots on the right) and a jaunty hat. He did not paint a gun because "you can't have guns at school." You also can't have toys at school, gum at school, or flip-flops at school. He just goes with it.<br />
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I realized that the bigger deal was how I respond to the "violence" they use in their play. I don't let them shoot at me, each other, or other random bystanders. I tell them that good guys should not shoot first (obviously that's an oversimplification, but they are little). Mostly, I tell them that we only use force to protect ourselves or someone who needs our help.<br />
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That's really the key and the reason I let them play like this at all--they are always pretending that they are protecting others. I don't want them starting fights or glorifying violence, but I absolutely want them to feel a responsibility to defend the weak and take care of those who cannot do it themselves.<br />
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These little boys will be men with resources and influence in our society. While most men don't use physical force in their daily lives, they do have opportunities to be heroes with their time, money, and political motives. They will have the chance to do justice often and I want them to believe that that's what heroes fight for.<br />
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I want my boys to believe they can BE those heroes with whatever tools they have in their arsenals--their votes, their dollars, and maybe even a wiffle bat.</div>
Best Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13065964759346952958noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2690271413637754639.post-6861954569510939672014-09-17T09:58:00.000-04:002014-09-17T10:00:48.498-04:00Stay on Your Horse<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4VY3B5-HIWKt2fmIm2fcVZYBUCZP9whZJ2n1T8oU-PIOPOq73WLbsTpCaFIHUMyuv3WSX1nTy4iLSLqSABbTLE9MtVSAEwP_Sm0OluyoC1bwu3EYjdIIrdCc2EpIveSfPRpp9_XFzSQyc/s1600/cowgirl.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4VY3B5-HIWKt2fmIm2fcVZYBUCZP9whZJ2n1T8oU-PIOPOq73WLbsTpCaFIHUMyuv3WSX1nTy4iLSLqSABbTLE9MtVSAEwP_Sm0OluyoC1bwu3EYjdIIrdCc2EpIveSfPRpp9_XFzSQyc/s1600/cowgirl.jpg" height="167" width="200" /></a></div>
My parents apparently watched a lot of Westerns growing up because their advice frequently took the form of sage wisdom you might get from a cowboy. In fact, my mother's favorite movie line is from a 1970 Western/comedy mash-up called <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065446/?ref_=ttqt_qt_tt">The Ballad of Cable Hogue</a>. It goes like this:<br />
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<i><b>Reverend Joshua Sloane:</b> Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord.</i></div>
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<i><span style="color: black;"><b>Cable Hogue:</b></span><span style="color: #333333;"> Well, that's fair enough with me... just as long as he don't take too long and I can watch.</span></i></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">It's amazing I'm as well adjusted as I am. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">So I got advice like "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink" and "if you fall off your horse, you get right back on." I have ridden a horse maybe...twice?...in my life. Why so many horse-related sayings? I have no idea. I guess it worked, though, because not only do I remember them, I've been thinking a lot about this next one lately.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><i>You can't change horses mid-stream.</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">Honestly, I don't know if you can change horses mid-stream or not. It seems difficult, but not totally impossible. There might be swimming involved. But I get the idea--if you start out on a journey with one mode of transportation it is going to be incredibly difficult to change your mind without getting really, really wet. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">I try to keep this in mind in my parenting. Sure, I have the freedom to change my mind or course-correct if I discover a particular tactic not working with my kids, but it is a lot easier to start out as I mean to go on. Excuse my dorky history self, but it reminds me of a little-known period of African history that has been all but forgotten in modern curricula.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">In the 1800s, after several European nations had conquered almost all of the continent of Africa, there was a period of uprisings of native groups of people. These groups managed to re-take their land and rule themselves freely, for however brief a time. When taken together, these successful rebellions are called the "Reclamation." People groups who had fought against each other for generations came together to throw off their English, Dutch, German, Italian, and French oppressors. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">The Reclamation was a time of increased national identity for Africans that reflected the nationalistic fervor being experienced in Europe, particularly in what would become the modern nations of Germany and Italy. So why didn't it last? It didn't last because the newly formed nations that centered themselves around a sense of national unity couldn't hold fast to that course of action. They decided, mid-stream, to separate into a loose and fragmented confederation of sorts which allowed the Europeans to reassert their dominance. You can't change your horse mid-stream.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">O.k., that was a lie. That whole thing about the Reclamation. That's not a thing. It didn't happen and is totally made up. I have to give props to Dave Boyd, a former co-worker and fellow World History teacher, for that entire spurious history lesson. A decade or so ago, Dave mentioned to me that so few people knew anything about history that we could make up an entire unit of study and not only convince our students, but probably quite a few teachers as well. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">And not to sound too terribly arrogant, but Dave and I are both....let's go with "confident." If the two of us had sworn up and down that these events happened, other people would have followed our lead without doing their own research. It just sounds so <i>reasonable</i>, doesn't it? It could have happened that way. There were facts (fake ones, but still) and sources that seemed trustworthy.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">Here's the thing: to my children, the ENTIRE WORLD sounds like that. They can be convinced of almost anything if it's said in a reasonable voice by someone whose motives are not obviously clear. That's why it is my job, even when it causes awkward conversations, to tell my kids what I actually think about things in the world. It is my job to offer real guidance and guidelines while they're still listening to me.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">When I was teaching I got an invaluable opportunity to observe a variety of parenting styles on hundreds of different personality types. One thing I noticed was that the parents who said "I don't want to influence their thinking" wound up with kids who were desperate to follow someone else. I know that those parents were attempting to empower their children to have their own thoughts and to make up their own minds about controversial topics--religion, sex, drug use, and political choices, for instance.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">Their unintended results, however, were kids who thought they had the experience and information needed to make very adult decisions on their own. Most teenagers will go through that phase, but the ones with parents who had a clear moral point of view at least knew that Mom and Dad would not approve of a particular behavior and therefore had a guardrail of sorts.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit; line-height: 18.2000007629395px;">I don't want to brainwash my children into weird zombies who cannot think for themselves, but it is my responsibility to help them navigate a world where everything--from middle-school-aged sex to recreational crystal meth use--can be made to sound reasonable to their not-yet-developed minds. They need to know that I have a point of view, <i>why</i> I have that point of view, and that I am living that point of view daily.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">And that brings my two ideas together. I need to get across my belief system and moral standards, but if I wait until they are faced with these decisions and then try to explain it all, I'm not going to have much credibility with them. I'm going to be trying to change horses mid-stream and we will all get very wet.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #333333;">So I'm trying to be aware and ready for all those "teachable" moments in their lives. When I get asked questions about <a href="http://redribbon.org/">Red Ribbon Week </a>at school, I throw in there that any drug that alters your mind can do damage. I point out that even mild ones can sort of "freeze" a kid's brain development and their future ability to make good decisions. </span><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 18.2000007629395px;">Maybe I'm the crazy mom giving her 4th grader too much information on the legalization of marijuana, but I'd rather be crazy than blindsided when my kid is taking hits in the bathroom at school. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit; line-height: 18.2000007629395px;">When we saw pictures of <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=angelina+jolie+wedding+dress&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS383US383&es_sm=93&biw=1218&bih=715&tbm=isch&imgil=F_Fx-ZIIMBPFEM%253A%253BLlIVjFm1M_BQmM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.vanityfair.com%25252Fvf-hollywood%25252F2014%25252F09%25252Fangelina-jolie-wedding-dress&source=iu&pf=m&fir=F_Fx-ZIIMBPFEM%253A%252CLlIVjFm1M_BQmM%252C_&usg=__zdEaxng3KK39mf0JzD43-JFHzwQ%3D&ved=0CCsQyjc&ei=ko8ZVOKFNIe0ggSgoYDYCw#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=F_Fx-ZIIMBPFEM%253A%3BLlIVjFm1M_BQmM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fphotos.vanityfair.com%252F2014%252F09%252F02%252F5405c080b07716f63df1f4ac_angelina-jolie-wedding-dress.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.vanityfair.com%252Fvf-hollywood%252F2014%252F09%252Fangelina-jolie-wedding-dress%3B645%3B430">Angelina Jolie's wedding dress</a> and my daughter wanted to know who the kids were who drew on it, we wound up talking about how big of a commitment children are and that it is much easier to raise them with a husband first. There are actual reasons we value marriage so very much and not just an outmoded sense of convention. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">These are little things, but they will matter. When I use these opportunities to share my world view, and why I hold those views, I help my children navigate future situations where the stakes may be very high indeed. I become someone trustworthy, a voice worth listening to, and the giver of advice worth internalizing and even sharing with others.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;">How do I know this has a chance of working? Because that's what my mom did--with humor, and grace, and a lot of stories about horses. Let's be bold, let's be intentional, and let's all stay on our horses. When it comes to parenting our sweet children, we don't really have a choice.</span></div>
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Best Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13065964759346952958noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2690271413637754639.post-49938408818696408942014-09-11T09:33:00.006-04:002014-09-11T09:43:18.952-04:00Never Forget<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgD4FBzLc58OK04RxcaCHebKVejkqwBXx-F2-Oow7KTjXe4dfVpzhwTYCVWiB9nfk89CoSiVBA0QADsE23UFjCi2QBoQ9q-Kr412NqbUwT7caYd7a15lJ6isbxPN-JbJzgduafU2pV0nQaF/s1600/twin+towers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgD4FBzLc58OK04RxcaCHebKVejkqwBXx-F2-Oow7KTjXe4dfVpzhwTYCVWiB9nfk89CoSiVBA0QADsE23UFjCi2QBoQ9q-Kr412NqbUwT7caYd7a15lJ6isbxPN-JbJzgduafU2pV0nQaF/s1600/twin+towers.jpg" height="200" width="130" /></a>This morning, like every morning, we talked about what day it is on the way to school. Like, "today is Monday, October 5th", or whatever.<br />
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Except this morning it happens to be September 11th. Like many Americans, when I say that date out loud my voice changes just a little bit. Because I remember. Because it was scary and confusing and just plain horrible.<br />
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So this morning, when I said it is Thursday, September 11th, my voice got sad. My 9-year-old daughter sat up straighter in the car and said, "Oh, I know what happened! Can I tell everybody else?"<br />
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I told her yes and she proceeded to explain that "bad guys" stole some planes and crashed them into the "twin buildings" and maybe another plane tried to hit the Pentagon. Fairly accurate, but not quite it.<br />
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I was torn between my history teacher tendencies to tell the whole story, the fact that I didn't want to scar the kids and then shove them out of the car to school, and my belief that we should talk about our history (<i>especially</i> the painful and scary parts) with our younger generations.<br />
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I felt the weight of responsibility to explain this moment accurately, but with perspective little kids could understand.<br />
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On September 11, 2001 I was a 25-year-old teacher in Raleigh, North Carolina. I taught 10th grade World History, but I also taught Sociology and Psychology to two 12th grade classes. During class change, one of my seniors came up and said that a plane had hit the World Trade Center and she wanted to know if we could watch it on our classroom TV until the bell rang.<br />
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"Sure", I replied, thinking that this was like other times that small engine planes had hit one of the towers in New York. Interesting, but not intensely relevant.<br />
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And then, of course, the second one hit. And then Tom Brokaw told me they were passenger planes. And the towers collapsed. And the Pentagon exploded. And then I realized that we were under attack in a way that I, in my American naivete, had never even thought to fear.<br />
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I let my senior classes watch the whole thing unfold, thinking that as 18-year-old young men and women, they had a right to know what was changing in the world. One boy asked if this would mean the draft came back. One kid whose dad was flying out of Boston that day asked if I could hear the flight numbers of the aircraft. A recent immigrant from Palestine said that she didn't see what the big deal was--buildings were bombed by terrorists all the time.<br />
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I pointed out that no where in the world did 110-story buildings collapse all the time and that, in the United States, terrorist attacks were pretty big news. I felt that same weight I felt this morning. To be accurate, to give solid information without inciting hate or backlash towards others, but to get across what was happening. Honestly, it wasn't easy in a class with a kid whose grandparents had fled the Holocaust, the jaded kid from Palestine, and a couple of other immigrants from Iran. Not to mention the kids who thought this seemed like a good reason to buy more guns.<br />
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I took copious notes during my lunch period over whatever I could find about al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden and why people would kill themselves to destroy office buildings. At the start of every class period over the next few weeks we had a brief "here's what's new" time to discuss the history that was happening in that very moment. I think I did a pretty good job of conveying significance and awareness of world events without scaring them into hiding in their houses forever. But it was hard and I was uncertain.<br />
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So, how do I talk about it with my own kids now--13 years after the raw, painful moments changed our view of what war is?<br />
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My children actually already have a decent context for 9/11 because their uncle is a soldier. We have had to explain numerous times over the years why their aunt is here for Christmas or Thanksgiving, but their uncle is away "at the war." We say that there are bad people in the world who try to hurt others and that our soldiers go fight them in other countries so that they can't come here.<br />
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It is a gross oversimplification, of course, but there's not a whole lot else to say to little children when they love a soldier who is actually in the fight.<br />
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In the first deployment during which my daughter was old enough to notice, I mentioned to our pediatrician that I didn't know what to tell her. He asked, "are you a religious family?" "Yes," I said. "Then just have her pray for him."<br />
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What great advice. What an obvious solution that I already knew in my head and my heart. My children are so blessed that they cannot understand the kind of hate that would cause someone to train for their own suicide, taking out as many civilians as possible in the process. I have had to define the word "war" on many occasions. There is no way that I can adequately explain to them what happened on that other September 11th.<br />
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But I can tell my kids that we should pray. For the families who lost loved ones in 2001. For the soldiers who are <i>still</i> fighting this fight on a daily basis. For the firemen and policemen who risk themselves every day for us. And even for the "bad guys" who, somewhere along the way, lost their compassion and their humanity.<br />
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As they get older we can also pray for our government's decisions in other countries, for opportunities to make the world a more peaceful place, and for understanding of people desperate and disillusioned enough to choose suicide bombing as a solution for societal problems.<br />
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I hope that I am not too forthright with my answers to their questions--I certainly don't want them to fear terrorist attacks in their beds at night. But I do want them to know that the whole world is not as wonderful as the one they live in. I want them to know that bad people exist in the midst of complex political and economic challenges--and that we can be part of the solutions. I want them to pray--and to never forget. </div>
Best Momhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13065964759346952958noreply@blogger.com0