Earth Day

Earth Day

It’s easy to get jaded about the state of the world, and what humans are doing to it: pollution, war, greed, disregard… but there is so much more that’s good about our world.

Sometimes, we just need to step outside to refresh, and reset our perspectives.

I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order. John Burroughs
I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.
John Burroughs
Butterfly
There are always flowers for those who want to see them.

Henri Matisse
There are always flowers for those who want to see them.
Henri Matisse
May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.

Edward Abbey
May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view.
May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.
Edward Abbey

Nature gives me hope

poppy

Kids give me hope

running

“seems to me, it ain’t the world that’s so bad, but what we’re doin’ to it”
~ Louis Armstrong

Love, Baby, Love… Yeah….

I hope you can take a moment and get outside to enjoy the beauty and magic.

Happy Earth Day

Gem’s gems 2013 wrapup

Gem’s gems 2013 wrapup

My 4-year-old comes up with some of the best one-liners, and life with this little girl is fun and amazing, and lived at full-speed. Here’s a roundup of some of my favorite Gem moments from last year, many of which you might have already seen on my facebook page.

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G: when I grow up I will have a magical bakery where I turn unicorns into doughnuts.
Me: I thought you loved unicorns.
G: I do. they’re delicious.

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G collected an assortment of dandelions and daisies on our adventures this morning – now, she’s using them as paint brushes. Love how her mind works.

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orange dress, pink pants, red shoes, ZERO hesitation.

orange dress, pink pants, red shoes, ZERO hesitation.

Mommy, I’m going to have to teach you how to dance Swan Lake.

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It’s the middle of nap time and the kid just stuck her head out her bedroom to say: “Mommy, I need some lemon juice and extra virgin olive oil.”

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little chef helped me make french toast for breakfast this morning. When we sat down to eat, she got out her little cookbook and proceeded with critiquing my method. “This recipe says one egg, you used too many. And this says one four cup milk and you didn’t even measure. and you didn’t measure the salt or the cinnamon, either. This isn’t really french toast!”
Me: “oh,yeah? then what is it?”
G flips to the next page in her cook book: “mexican omelet”

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G: the early bird gets the pig
me: ?
G: some kinds of birds eat pigs
me: what kind of bird does that?
G: angry birds

She Blinded me with Science

Pro Tip: don’t answer when your 3-year-old asks what gravity is. Why? Because 5 minutes later, everything on the table will be on the floor, and she’ll say, “I didn’t do it; gravity did.”

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me: “would you like to go visit the tulip fields next week?”
G: “Are they on Earth?”

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G was over the moon when I gave her a calculator to play with this morning “it has all my favorite numbers!

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G: “Is Santa nocturnal?
Me: ?
G: “If he stays up all night to deliver presents, does that make him nocturnal?

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When she met Santa, she asked him for a jump rope, a my little pony set, and a skeleton she could put together.

The Wisdom of Youth

G: “Daddy! That’s not a nice word. Don’t say that word.”
A: “OK, I’ll try.”
G: “Don’t try, just do it!”

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Mommy, your silly phone made the wakeup song when it was still dark outside, so I turned it off

what did she spend her wish on? "I wish I could be the Loch Ness Monster."

what did she spend her wish on? “I wish I could be the Loch Ness Monster.”

Me: “What do you think we should get Daddy for Christmas?”
G: “I think Daddy wants a new potty that’s colored gold, and has lots of sparkles”

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Me: “i’ll think about it.”
G: “mom, dont just keep thinking. make a choice and then do it.”

Smooth Operator

Me: “I love you more than chocolate”
G: “I love you more than crab-shaped cookies”

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G explaining to Daddy why “I just want to be near Mumum” while I desperately try to get caught up on this avalanche of homework:  “I love her face, and I love her smile, and I love her hair, and I love her watch, and I even love her eyes, and she takes care of me… I love that she takes care of me”

I don’t think I’m getting caught up on homework tonight… #sucker

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“You got a treat for Daddy? And me? But, did you get a treat for Mommy?”
“Mommy needs to stop eating treats, kiddo.”
“But, treats are happy things. You can’t stop eating treats! Treats are WONDERFUL!”

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on our way to a party and just checked the books the kid brought with her. yeah… it was a collection of my journals. at least they’re the 40-year-old “never ending to do list” type journal instead of the angsty 16-year-old “i’m the center of the universe and it’s imploding” journals.  but still. . . starting to feel a little angsty again

Lets get this party started

G: “who wants to panic with me?” runs around room waving arms in the air, yelling. meanwhile, I haven’t had my coffee yet.

what about the monkey

[about the picture above]
G: “we cant go yet because the ostrich is going to marry the horse”
Me: “what about the monkey?”
G: “he will find out soon enough”

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G, on the way to the party last night: “I’m bringing the party with me, I carry it in my heart.”

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excerpt from the prattle emanating from the back seat of the car:  “…then I will put this sticker on my shin, and everywhere we go people will say ‘look at that girl, she is so interesting'”

Feminista

This morning our neighbor called her a “doll,” and then my 4yo daughter spent the next 10 minutes lecturing me about how dolls cant think or do anything all by themselves, but she’s a real girl and she decides what she does. I love these little rants of hers.

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“Don’t worry, Mommy. I have a plan.”

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Me: time to get a move on, Babe
G: Mommy! Little girls are NOT babes
Me: Oh. What are they?
G: They’re womens.

Later

G: But little boys are babes

I should get some kind of parenting award… or not

We’ve been learning left and right, so at a stop light I had her raise her left arm, then her right, her left leg, then her right. Then the light changed, and we drove off.

A little while later I hear from the back seat
“Mommy?”
“yes, Sweety”
“Can I put them down now?”

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Me: “It’s not my job to decide whether or not you’re happy. That’s your job.”
G: “No, my job is to push buttons.”

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I was frustrated with some stupid mechanical mess, and telling my husband about it, when the little angel interrupted — “Mommy, when you’re frustrated, you need to take a deep breath and count to three…”
If she wasn’t so cute, that would have been really annoying. Way to ruin a perfectly good bad mood, kiddo.

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A way with words

G: “That was so embarrassing.”
Me: “Wow. Embarrassing is a really big word. What do you think it means?”
G: “It means when you don’t want to be who you are.”

ouch. perceptive, but ouch.

Me: “I think you’re pretty awesome. Why were you embarrassed?”
G: “Not Meeeeee, Mom! (rolls eyes) My burrito was embarrassed, that’s why it fell in my lap. it didn’t want to be lunch.”

whew.

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After she prattled off her list of demands, I said “I see.”
G: “Mommy, that means you said yes in Spanish”

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Me: I’m running low on patience.
G: Mommy, please get more patience.

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Best moment ever: G greeting Aaron at the door, jumping up and down, squealing and saying “I didn’t know what the words were, but I sounded them out and now I know all the  words!!!!”

Looking Ahead

2014 started with G yelling from her bedroom: “Butterfly to the rescue!”

Living in the gap

Living in the gap

Our 4-year-old asked for a pencil and paper. We were at my husband’s office visiting, and she developed an urgent need for writing implements. We handed them over, and Aaron and I continued our conversation – till we noticed she was writing something.

She was copying down the Arabic alphabet from a graph in the book. Her initiative, her drive, her curiosity, her thirst for knowledge and understanding never cease to amaze me.

Of course I took a picture.

be kind: we're all living in the gap

Then when I went to post the picture on Instagram/Facebook, I hesitated.

There have been so many posts rolling around complaining about moms who do nothing but brag on their kid on their Facebook page. I thought about it again, and hesitated again.

Then I posted this on Facebook:

I know I post a lot about how awesome my kid is – and I know it can get annoying. Too bad. Every kid needs someone who pays attention, who notices what’s unique and amazing about them, who champions them. I wish every kid had that. So if you want to post on facebook about how awesome some kid is, some amazing thing they said or did, some spark of genius, or creativity, or compassion you noticed in a young person – rock on. The world needs more of that too.

It wasn’t till that post started generating some positive response, that I finally worked up the nerve and posted the picture about my daughter above.

But why did I hesitate in the first place?

Why do I place so much stock in the opinion of whiners?

On a logical level, I don’t give a crap what everyone else thinks – but there’s that little girl, deep down inside me still desperate for acceptance and approval. I grew up with an overwhelming fear of being obnoxious and annoying; it was one of my greatest fears, and it kept me isolated.

I have this idea of who I am, and who I think I should be. I think I should be someone who is not driven by fear, especially fear of the opinions of others.

Then I take a look at my behavior and it doesn’t always match.

I think my choices as a parent should be based on what will best help my daughter to grow into a strong and compassionate woman of integrity, but what I do is different. I watch myself making parenting choices based on what I think will negatively or positively impact my popularity. It takes me right back to Freshman locker banks at my high school – an anxiety ridden place, indeed.

This entire scenario reminded me of Ira Glass talking about how a creative person’s sense of taste develops before their skill, so there is this gap between what they think they should be doing and what they’re actually able to do.

That story was life-changing for me.

It’s not just about creativity

While Glass was being specific about creativity, I think his point carries over to many other aspects of our lives.

We have this vision of the world, we have this vision of what it means to be a good parent, a good person… We see how our own attitudes and behaviors play into that vision. We know we want to “be the change.”

But there is this gap.

You don’t just wake up one morning and decide to be different, better, and that’s it, done. It takes practice. Years of practice.

But life happens in the meantime. We are all living in the meantime – in the gap.

We don’t get practice time, and then go out and live our lives after we’ve perfected ourselves. We go out and try things, see if they work, we fall down, we get up, we embarrass ourselves, we don’t die of embarrassment – but we don’t get to practice life without an audience. And that audience usually has an opinion. It doesn’t matter.

Life is not about perfection. It’s about doing the best we can, and when we miss the mark, learning from it, course correcting, and moving on.

We need to remember to be gentle with ourselves, to remember that we’re living in the gap. To just keep trying.

And when someone else offends us, well, maybe they’re living in the gap, too.

be kind: we're all living in the gap

So here I am, waxing on about wishing I could be as brave as I think I should be, and my little girl just wanted to practice writing new letters.  I’m so proud of her, and I want the whole world to know it.

P.S. She calls the Arabic alphabet “letter parties.”

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Gem’s gems

Gem’s gems

3-year-olds say the darnedest things. For instance, my 3-year-old said:

Dammit.” When I turned to look at her, she responded in her most matter-of-fact voice, “I say that now.

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Gem, January 2012

She said a lot this past year, most of which I have already forgotten. There were a few zingers that stood out for me, like

I’m beautiful and frustrated.

and

NO! I not contrary!

When I had a case of the blahs, she said “Mommy, you can dance if you want to.”

When I told her, “I love you more than pork chops,” she corrected me, saying “No, Mommy. You love me more than chocolate.” And she was right.

I asked her why her crayons were all over the place. She replied, “I was using them as fairy dust.”

One day, she informed me that “Hide and seek is my favorite, favorite game. Can we play hide and seek?
“Sure,” I replied. So she walked over to the keyboard and started playing it.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
We need some hiding music.
And then, I’m pretty sure I heard her say “Duh!” under her breath.

After the 647,251,986th time of being asked for stickers, I said, “I’m all out of stickers. Stop asking me for stickers.”
Mommy, I need something that’s a little bit sticky on the back and has a picture on the front.

When we were shopping for Christmas gifts at the mall, she named off the type of store as we walked past each one… “shoe store, jewelry store, hat store…” then, as we walked past Victoria’s Secret, she said “balloon store…

and then one night as I was tucking her in, my sweet little girl said “When you’re done giving me hugs and kisses, I’m going to need more hugs and kisses.”

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Gem, January 2013

I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next.

What are you’re favorite kid sayings?

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