Gorham-it

When Will and I were about 24 and 23 respectively, we went to Peru. We each had 1 backpack for a 10 day trip, and I, even though I am a meticulous planner even left the end of our trip unplanned so that we could try flying by the seats of our pants. That didn't go so well, as Will got violently ill and I had to argue in my extremely limited Spanish to get us a desperate 24 hour long cross-country bus ride to Lima so we could make our flight home. However, I still remember sitting in an outdoor cafe one evening in Aguas Caillentes and watching a blonde-headed 3 year old European girl play quietly in the walkway while her young, hip parents enjoyed their dinner. Will and I were encouraged by the little family, and agreed that once we had kids we would get them used to traveling so that becoming parents wouldn't stop us from continuing to travel the world.

Now that I am actually in possession of those hypothetical kids we were talking about, the thought of figuring out how to fly them to and control them in a 3rd world country puts me in a cold sweat. I realize this is completely my fault; we haven't practiced traveling with them as much as we should, plus I am easily overwhelmed. There's also the fact that it's just plain difficult to provide for your childrens' needs in an unfamiliar environment while also trying to shield the rest of the world from their loud exuberance and fondness for knocking things over. Add in the pressure of doing all this while simultaneously shepherding them from activity to activity in order to make "precious memories" and it's a wonder we ever come back from vacation alive.

We spent the last week of August in the Adirondacks at YMCA Camp Gorham again, and it did not go nearly as well as it did last time. I had thought that NOT being pregnant and having a husband who was NOT currently in the middle of a 2-year long bout of "wasting disease" would make up for the fact that we had 2 kids this time, but apparently not. Part of the problem was that it is designed as a sleep-away camp for kids 6 and older, and it's only the last week of the summer that whole families are allowed to all go together. However many of the rules that are in place for the 6 year olds who are there on their own remain in place even when the parents are present, which results in ridiculously regimented activities. Many of the activities (horseback riding, zipline) were very attractive to little kids but had age limits for participation, and those that didn't have age limits were only available for random short periods of time. The girls desperately wanted to swim in the lake, but kids were only allowed to swim in certain areas for 2ish hours a day which would sometimes be in the middle of their extremely necessary nap time, or while Emily's favorite activity (the bouncing pillow) was open. When you DID swim, you had to wear a life vest (or "PFD") NOT water wings, which the kids were not used to and didn't like. So we spent a lot of time and patience getting the kids TO an activity we thought they'd enjoy only to leave with crying, disappointed girls despite our best efforts. Flexibility is so essential when you're traveling with young children, and all the rules about how we could do activities with our own children took pretty much every bit of flexibility away.

It's especially frustrating for Will because he has such good memories of camp from his childhood, but as adults we had no time to do anything WE wanted to do because it took 2+ adults to tend the always exhausted, usually disappointed kids at all times. The food was not quite as good this time either (lunch one day was chicken patties and french fries) and eating in a dining hall, while it was nice that I didn't have to make meals or do dishes, was kind of like going to a restaurant with the girls 3x a day for a week. Yuck.

The accommodations, which is what I was MOST worried about ahead of time, turned out to be fantastic. We were in a lodge that was just opened this year, and we had several showers and toilets (in stalls for privacy!) attached to our room, a separate room for the girls (totally key) and easy access to a full kitchen, which was great for keeping Will's ice pack for his back frozen and providing a quick and easy place for Emily to realize her dream of roasting marshmallows (on the gas stove, since having a campfire did not work out. AT CAMP.)

So we've decided with equal measures of sadness and relief that we won't be going to Camp Gorham for the next couple years. We'll try again when the girls are old enough to do more of the activities, but for now it's unfortunately more hassle and exhaustion than it's worth. I hold out hope that one day we can go back and enjoy it as it's meant to be enjoyed.

Some pics from the trip:

Soccer Mom

I signed Emily up for a little 5-week soccer class this spring. It's held at a park that is within walking distance of our house, this particular class takes kids as young as 3 years old, and the description didn't say that parent participation was required so it sounded like a winner to me! I figured I'd bike the girls to soccer in their little bike trailer, let Charlotte play outside while Emily kicked the ball around with 10 or so other kids and I chatted with other parents, and we'd all have a great time.

My first clue that things wouldn't be exactly as I had hoped was an email I received the week of her first class. It asked parents to show up "Wearing athletic clothes and a smile!" so that we could help. Uh oh. That wasn't part of the deal! I'm not AGAINST helping, but I never really played soccer plus I would have a crazy toddler to wrangle. This is why I had purposely picked the one that didn't say parent participation was required!

The weather has also been hideous every single Wednesday that she's had class. The first day it looked like this:

All the days since then it has looked like this (or worse):

To avoid being struck by lightning or dying of heat stroke, I have only actually biked the girls to the park once.

In addition to all of the other things working against us, there are approximately 2000 3-5 year olds in the class. Ok, maybe the number is actually closer to 20, but that is still A LOT of 3-5 year olds to handle for 3 coaches who seem to have minimal experience with kids. There is also a whole lot of pushing and crying (which I actually find kind of hilarious). That's where the parent participation comes in. There is not much parent chatting. Pretty much the only interaction the parents have is trying to make our children apologize to each other after getting into a fight. I try to keep my kid from stealing other people's balls, crying, screaming at the coaches, wandering off into a field etc., all the while being followed by this:


I deal with it though, because I want to expose Emily to as many activities as possible so she can make an educated decision as to what she wants to continue participating in when she gets older. I realize now that my expectations were a bit off, but I worry that this disorganized and usually uncomfortably hot experience is going to sour Emily to soccer for life.

Today though, despite the heat, things went pretty well. Either because some of the kids have just dropped out by this point or because of the heat index of 105, there were only 6(!) kids there today. Also I have wised up and I now come prepared and bring the whole house with me for our 45 minute class 5 minutes from our home:

Shaded chairs for relaxing, and a spray fan for cooling off

Emily actually played the whole time today without crying too!


AND Charlotte behaved pretty well, as long as I was providing copious amounts of snacks and juice boxes at all times
Put down the camera and gimme some snacks!

So maybe I will sign her up for soccer in the fall after all. Now I know to ask ahead of time how big the class will be, and hopefully thunderstorms and excessive heat will be less of a problem in the fall. By then I'm sure we'll have a whole new set of issues to deal with!

Oops

Things I kinda sorta should have thought through a little better before our trip:

#1 The Maids

I was going to cancel the maids for this week, because as nice as it would have been to come home from the airport to a nice clean house, I usually TRASH my house right before leaving on a trip. Clothes strewn all over the place from my packing, the girls toys laying everywhere because I've been focusing on getting everyone ready vs. picking up around the house, unsorted papers and recycling all over the kitchen etc. This time was no exception, but unfortunately I forgot to cancel the maids. The poor things still cleaned my house, but they had to scrape my laundry into a pile to vacuum the floor, pick up all the girls toys before cleaning the living room, and clear all of the various lotions and soaps that were discarded for being over 3oz off of my bathroom counter. I'm extremely embarassed to think about all the extra things they had to do, especially considering I didn't leave a check for them :-(

#2 Will's Business Trip

We planned the trip to Jamaica first, but it turned out Will has a business trip that starts today. From the time our plane from Jamaica landed to the time Will's plane to Orlando was scheduled to take off was about 70 hours. As an abstract idea it seemed ok, in practice it's brutal, both for Will who has to actually DO the traveling, and for me who now has to be a single parent for a couple days right when it's the most tough anyway (It always seems like the kids are worse when you're getting used to having them around again after not being with them for awhile). Oh well, at least I'm well-rested.


#3 Our CSA

In my defense, this wasn't REALLY my fault since our CSA didn't start until the 3rd week of June last year, but when I came home and finally checked my voicemail (I was embarassed about the maids and didn't want to hear the message I suspected they had left so I didn't actually listen to them until Sunday) there was a message telling me to come pick up my veggies on Friday. I was able to get them today, but we had gone to the farmer's market on Saturday so now we're drowning in lettuce and spinach. I seriously need to eat salads for breakfast, lunch, and dinner this week, especially since Will isn't around this to help me finish it all!

#4 My Old Roommate's Wedding

The day we left, my old roommate from junior year of college got married. She and her new husband met and started dating when we were juniors in college, and that time is getting frighteningly long ago for me so it's safe to say this wedding has been a long time coming. Even though she has lived in Atlanta and now Boston since I saw her last, she was getting married near here so it would've been easy to go. Unfortunately we couldn't, which makes me very sad :-(

#5 Canceling the mail

I DID remember to cancel the mail, only to realize that since we'd be gone over Memorial Day there were only actually 2 mail days that we'd miss. Hardly worth cancelling, but oh well. Except that we still don't have any mail and it was supposed to be delivered on Thursday. I don't think I can fix this online, so I will have to call the post office or go in, because either they screwed up (in which case I am worried about where my mail IS right now) or I screwed up and accidentally told them to stop the mail for a month or something crazy like that (in which case I am not as worried about where my mail IS, but would still like to get it because there are probably some bills in there waiting for me). Hopefully they're not just dumping it down a hole somewhere.

Some of these issues could've been avoided with a bit more forethought, some couldn't, but I'm hoping when I plan our next trip that I will do a little better job of thinking ahead so I can save us some embarassment, exhaustion, disappointment, lack of mail and excess of greens.

Everybody sing Jamaica!

Sorry, whenever I think of the word "Jamaica", this song pops into my head.

Will and I took a quick (4 nights) trip to Jamaica last week. We used to go to the Caribbean all the time back when we were young, childless newlyweds, but having kiddoes curtailed that pretty quick. I have taken a couple trips without Emily since she was born, but I've never left Charlotte for longer than 1 night and I've never left the country since having kids so this was a big hairy deal for me. We decided on Jamaica because #1 We'd never been before and #2 We could get a direct flight from Baltimore. If I was leaving my kids, I didn't want to make the trip any longer with layovers!

I was kind of a wreck when I left...Emily is old enough now to realize what is going on and she was a bit sad I was leaving, especially since she asks me practically daily if she can fly in an airplane or go to the beach and here we were doing both without her. I cried as we drove away, and was feeling pretty sick to my stomach as we headed to the airport. Partially because I haven't traveled (especially internationally) in so long, and partially because I was going to be so far away from my kids and difficult to reach.

But I finally chilled out a bit when we got to Jamaica, and we ended up having a great time. I appreciate being able to relax and do whatever *I* want to do so much more now that I have kids. Whenever I'd miss the girls (for example when a family with a 4 year old girl and a 1 year old girl wearing pink tiaras sat down at the table next to us at breakfast) I'd avert my gaze to a kid acting bratty (there were usually a couple of those close by too) and feel glad that I wasn't currently trying to control my kids in a restaurant. We spent our time wandering, laying on the beach and hanging out in the pool getting drunk in the middle of the day on our own schedule, instead of standing by the playground trying to convince our kids it was time to go eat or go back to the room for a nap.

We even went for massages, which is not unique for me, but is very out of the ordinary for Will. His last massage was on our honeymoon 7.5 years ago, and he hated it. He enjoyed this massage, although he had to tell his masseuse to go easier on him a couple times. Apparently Jamaican masseuses are beasts, because I finally met my match in a masseuse as well. I usually like a hard massage...my sister and I used to "work out the knots" in each other's backs growing up, which was basically just taking out our pent-up aggressions on each other, so I'm accustomed to pain during a massage and I even welcome it because I know that I will feel better and looser the next day if the masseuse really goes at it. But this woman was nuts. I ALMOST made it through the massage, but at one point I was in so much pain that when I opened my eyes my vision slid sideways a bit so I decided that rather than passing out I would tell her to ease up, something that was not easy for me to do because I had never had to do it before! I felt defeated until a couple hours later, when I noticed my back looked like this:

Not normal. It looks like something tried to claw its way through my skin, but really she managed to make those marks with her elbow. Yeouch! I couldn't stand anyone touching my back for 3 days afterward.

Luckily, the massage was the most stressful part of my trip (kind of backwards, isn't it?) and now that I've done my first international jaunt away from the girls I think future trips will be easier.

Pacified

As newborns, both of my daughters would take a pacifier now and then, but once the first couple of weeks of their lives had passed and they actually became aware of what was going on they didn't really care for them. After I had determined that Charlotte was not going to be a pacifier girl I lamented the fact that it was now 100% on me and my boobs to satisfy her constant need to suck, but I also breathed a sigh of relief that I would never have to break one of my children of a pacifier habit. I boiled all my pacifiers and handed them off to my friend Carolyn whose baby daughter, it seemed, WAS a pacifier girl. It turned out though that she had discriminating taste and only liked soothie pacifiers, so Carolyn recently returned the rest. I tossed the bag into my box of outgrown sippy cups and baby food making paraphanalia and forgot about it.

Emily and Charlotte would periodically dig the bag of pacifiers out of the box, suck on them, giggle, scatter them everywhere and then move on. I'd dutifully wash them all, put them back in the bag, and put the bag back in the box. I should perhaps move the box, but the rest of my house is so jam-packed with outgrown baby stuff waiting to be passed down to my sisters or sisters-in-law when they start procreating (please get on that girls! Emily and Charlotte need cousins!) that there's not really anywhere else to put it that is safe from stinkbugs (i.e. not my garage or attic or back porch).

About a week ago, Charlotte dug out some pacifiers as usual, only this time she remained interested in them. She chose one and kept it in her mouth as she went about her business. When bedtime rolled around, she still had her pacifier with her, and for the past week she has had one in her mouth almost constantly.




I believe I have mentioned before that Charlotte has been a pretty tough baby. Tougher than Emily anyway, and those are the only two babies I have experience raising. Charlotte also seems to have inherited my sister's "JPL" (just plain loud) gene, and is capable of keeping up an almost constant series of earsplitting shouts and moans if you are not doing exactly what she wants you to do, ESPECIALLY in the car.

But since bonding with her pacifier? She will happily play in her crib for a bit at night, then fall asleep without a peep instead of screaming for 10 minutes after I leave the room like she does EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. She calmly sat on my mom's lap at Will's graduation for about 45 minutes, which is completely unprecedented. She is SO.MUCH.QUIETER. She is more patient on shopping trips. She'll occupy herself while I do some dishes. The list goes on and on.

It has really been like a miracle. It's like all the toughest parts of Charlotte's personality are gone, and I'm left to enjoy the (many) wonderful parts!

Of course, being a mom, my first reactions have been guilt and worry. Will she become dependant on the pacifier to the point where I WILL have to break her of it at some point? Will it mess up her teeth or delay further speech development? Am I being a pushover letting her have it all the time just to make my life easier? I do miss being able to see her mouth. And how weird is it for a 16 month old who never cared about pacifiers before to all of a sudden become obsessed with them?

Then again, she has ALWAYS loved to suck...maybe she is just naturally anxious and having something to suck on is relieving those feelings of anxiety? And if I have found a fairly commonly used and harmless way to make my day to day life go SO much more smoothly, well, don't I deserve a break from all the pawing and screaming and whining and biting?

For now I'm allowing it. There may come a time when it seems to be an issue, but for now I've decided to enjoy myself and enjoy my daughter. We'll let tomorrow take care of itself.

Zhyoonicorn party

On Saturday we had Emily's 4th birthday party. It was technically a unicorn-themed party, but she still has some funny little speech hangups and pronounces it as "zhyoonicorn". I will be sad when that little quirk goes away.

We had gorgeous weather, much to my relief.
Emily wanted to have her party at the park where she had it last year, and it's always very nerve-wracking at that instant that you finally commit and send out invitations for something that might very well get rained out at the last minute. Maybe that's why I didn't actually send the invitations until about a week before the party. Oops. Except that I kind of do that every year.

As usual, I freaked out about how many people I was going to invite. Practically all of our family lives in the area, all the way up to Emily's Great Great Grandmother, which is wonderful, but it makes parties difficult because as soon as I've invited all the family members I already have a guest list of 50 people. Preschool added a new element to consider, because with each preschool friend I invited there was a possibility of 2 parents and 1-2 siblings coming along as well, which adds up REALLY fast. Emily has not been invited to any of her preschool friends' birthday parties, and I got all indignant about it and was perhaps even heard to declare that I was going to invite EVERYONE in Emily's class to make them feel bad for not inviting her (why yes I am very mature) but I've been forced to eat some humble pie because when it came time to actually sit down and plan everything out I realized wow. That's a lot of kids. So I slowly, painfully paired our guest list down, and this time several core family members couldn't make it anyway, so we ended up with a very manageable party and all of my worry and lamenting that drove everyone around me nuts was for naught*

The cake got finished in time, and people actually ate it even though it was whole wheat. It probably helped that the frosting was not a bit healthy. I have yet to figure out how to healthify frosting and still end up with something that you can decorate with.
My wonderful family, as usual, helped me set up and clean up, sometimes at great personal risk
Even though I couldn't find the candles for her cake, it was a nice party.







After the party, we went to get Emily her present from Mommy and Daddy, which was her first bike. I was all for heading to Toys R Us and buying a $30 bike to present to her during present-opening time, but Will was adamant that we needed to take her with us to a REAL bike store and make an event out of it. It was a nice idea, but what really happened was that after the party was over we laid around until about 5:45 recovering, then realized that the bike place closes at 6 on Saturdays and had to throw everyone into the car and make a mad dash to the store. They only had one bike that was her size anyway, and predictably both girls were wailing within minutes of entering the store, so Will ran out the door with a screaming flailing girl under each arm while I remained behind to pay for her bike...which we brought home and Emily refused to ride, instead prefering her scooter she got for her 3rd birthday.


She'll learn to ride her bike someday, I'm sure. But for now no one has enough energy to teach her how.

*As an aside, I will mention that I have realized and hope to address the fact that it is about 90% disorganization that makes me freak out about everything so much (the rest is most likely neuroses). I want to be the mom who makes awesome cupcakes for her daughter to take to school on her birthday and throws well-planned birthday parties and does thoughtful things for people, and while I am just barely managing to do these things, it it stressful for me. Since I am so disorganized I feel like I am always living my life with everything on the verge of disaster, so doing anything above and beyond the norm is extremely stressful because while I am focusing on a project, everything around me DOES then end up falling into disaster. It would also help if I weren't totally lazy. I think some scheduling and menu planning would be extremely helpful, so I am going to try to implement both of those things as a start. I have to start somewhere, because "Do everything better" and "Be organized" aren't very helpful things to put on my to-do list. I would love to entertain more and look forward to events and engagements with excitement instead of the feeling of "OH MY GOD I still have so much work to do for this!!!!" I've always been awesome at procrastination, so this will take a lot of work, but I really do want to try to improve in this area.

4 Years

2007
2008

2009

2010
Yesterday


A very happy 4th birthday to my beautiful little evil genius! We love you more than words can say.