Velveteen Mind

A Glimpse into the Future

For all of you lovely commenters that said things like "yea, you're back!" when I started picking up my posting schedule, I owe you an apology.  I totally fell right off of the edge of the blogosphere again.  But, oh the fun that I had while I was away!

For a week, I was a PreSchool Parent, a Party Planner, a semi-pro Carnival Operator, a Tennis Cheerleading Coach, and somehow found time in there to attend HogHer '07, as well.  Almost all while out of town.  Whew.  Is this what life as a mom with school-age kids with their own schedules is going to be like?  Good grief.

While this meant that I only looked at a computer long enough to check my email every couple of days, it also means that I have great stories (and pictures!) to share this week.

Or...  maybe this week...  Pants starts preschool on Wednesday, which means that I am entering the world of school shopping and vaccination forms for the first time, so I'm going "no pressure" on the computer stuff for a bit longer.  I'm trying my best to not be a control freak mom (see, I'm still working on my MakeOver Monday goal of not being a control freak, in general) and that's taking more effort and time than I expected.  Case in point:

Our first full half-day visit at his preschool last week presented a couple of control-freak-challenges (such as the fact that the teacher put Pants on a work mat outside of the larger circle of kids on his very first visit while he's supposed to be meeting kids) that showed me that I'm going to have to get my head on straight if I'm going to not be one of those "hey, what about my kid?!" moms that try to do the teachers' jobs for them.  Okay.  Breathe.  Breathe.  Step away from the child and breathe.

Needless to say, I've got some work to do.

But this all means good posts coming up!  In the meantime, go check out Playgroups Are No Place For Children's account of HogHer '07 because apparently everyone had their heads up BlogHer's ass last week (and I'm sure this week, too) and we just couldn't be bothered.  At least not until next year.

Midnight Magic with Harry Potter

I think someone placed an Obliviate charm on me this weekend because I forgot all about my blog.  Or maybe someone Confunded me, because I may have gotten my priorities a bit skewed for a moment there. 

Yep, I read the new Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  Practically in one sitting.  My brain seems to have melted and leaked out of my ear. 

I've been reading that 759 page book non-stop since Saturday morning.  I think Pants taught himself how to make Goose some baby food somewhere along the way because I don't even remember feeding them.  Pants may have been surviving on leftover birthday cupcakes from Gooses's pseudo party the week before for all I know.  I was reading.

Now, I'm not some big Potter Geek that plays role playing games or whatever.  No offense to you RPG peeps out there, because I know you are there.  I just truly enjoy the books and think it is absolutely worth celebrating something that has brought a love of reading back to so many families.    

As such, I was totally on board for the final Book Release party at Barnes and Noble.  No, we didn't dress up, but we totally got a kick out of all the kids that did.  How can you not give at least a little respect to a series of books that has kids pumped about staying up all night to read an almost 800 page book?  This is a good thing, as far as I'm concerned.

Did any of you go to any of the Harry Potter Midnight Magic parties?  Our local Barnes & Noble had a costume contest, a fortune teller, a Sorting Hat station, and a face painting station, all leading up to the countdown at midnight for the actual book release.  Although we didn't participate, the costume contest was impressive and you couldn't help but feel like you were at Hogwarts when surrounded by so many Hogwarts school uniforms.  These kids were really into it and I loved it. 

We did line up to be Sorted, however.  How could we not?  Goose got Sorted into Gryffindor, the Sorting Hat announcing that he was "gifted with bravery and courage, this one."   Good going, Goose!  Pants backed out of the Sorting at the last minute, so I'm guessing that means he'll have to be a house-elf working in the kitchens.  Tough break.

Although Pants was having a ball the whole time, he never did totally commit to doing any of the activities himself.  I can't blame him, as he wasn't familiar with Harry Potter before we showed up at the party and he seemed to be under the impression that we were at a birthday party for this Potter kid.  Poor thing's going to be disappointed when he sees that I don't have bags and books with his face plastered on them for his own birthday party in a couple of days.

He didn't hesitate to sign me up for stuff to do, though.  Shortly after spotting the face painting station, he informed me that he found a place for "face paintings!" and I had to get one.   He was very specific in what I had to get (an owl) and where I had to get it (on my right cheek).  He was also very specific that he did not want one, thank you very much.  Thanks to our nifty (and very cheap) camera phones, we get to show off my fancy "face painting" and the tattoo Pants put on earlier in the day while trying out some of the activities we have planned for their birthday party.  As luck would have it, we're planning on having our own face painting and tattoo booth, so this was great practice!

Needless to say, we didn't stay until midnight for the actual launch.  We were living crazy staying out until past 10pm as it was.  I ran out and bought the book in the morning, though, and that brings me back to today, my Confudus charm having broken now that I finally finished reading the book last night and allowing me to remember that I do not, in fact, live in England, attend a magical school, or have a pressing need to defeat a dark lord of magic. 

I do, apparently, have a pressing need to do the dishes, laundry, and get us together for our carnival birthday party for both Goose and Pants on Thursday, however.  Being without a wand, all of these things must be done by hand, by me, and done now.

Such a shame, really.  I could so use a wand.  Anyone have a case of Mrs. Scower's Magical Mess Remover, at least?

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PS-  Upon review, I realize that I have now mentioned Harry Potter two posts in a row.  My husband, after reading this one, has pointed out that this post makes us look like total dorks.  Ahem.

I should therefore note that we are total Rock Stars.  On our better days, I'm sure my husband would like to think of us as Porn Stars.  We scorn all things Dork.  Rock on!  Bang your head!  Yadda yadda yadda.

...  I, however, still stand behind the fact that anything that makes kids pick up a book deserves to be celebrated.  This is precisely why I wanted to take the boys to this party.  Plant the seeds early.  Party about books!

In which case, I might just be a Rock Star Librarian.  But totally a rocker, nonetheless.  :)  Wait, do rockers use smiley faces?  Pretend that one has horns...  =:P

Harry Potter and the Twitter-ing Procrastinator

I'm tempted by Twitter.  I'd seen it around, read about it in some technical blogs, and sort of liked the Twitter-like updates on Plain Jane Mom's blog, the only blog I read that uses anything like it.  Now TypePad has a Twitter widget and I'm really thinking it might be fun...

Do you really want to know what I'm doing at any given moment of the day?  Would you like to have known, for instance, that I snuck out of the house at 10pm last night and took myself to the late showing of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix?  Would you have found it interesting that I spent the fifteen minutes before my show started, yawning through the last fifteen minutes of License to Wed?   Little did I know, but I could have sent my Twitter widget a text message and updated my blog with that information.

Would I feel more on-task, as though I'd like to have something interesting to Tweet?  What's the verb for Twitter, by the way?  I haven't read enough about it.  Or would it just be one more distraction?

Today, for instance, right this minute, I'm supposed to be packing an eBay shipment, paying bills, and launching some new auctions.  First, though, I need to clean up my office so I can even find my paperwork.  Of course, I can't do that in silence (the boys are at the park with our sitter and her 4 year old niece, which spells huge fun for Pants), so I decided to listen to an online stream of This American Life.  Who else adores Ira Glass?  Can I hear an "amen!" out there?

I'm such a geek, but I seriously love that show.  The Showtime version is almost as good as the NPR version.

Somewhere in here, I also need to do a little cake research for the boys' birthday party next week.  Yesterday was Goose's birthday and next Friday is Pants's birthday, so we're having a joint party next Thursday to celebrate.  Probably the only year I'll be able to get away with the joint party thing, too, so I've got to make it worth it.

We're doing a carnival theme, which I'm sure will come as no surprise to you given my carnival and circus obsession this year.  I wanted something that both boys would enjoy, but also good for a group of kids and parents, as we are having a real party this year with more guests than just the immediate family.  I'm so excited! 

Naturally, we are already bordering on over-the-top on this shindig, but I love it.  Love it!  I'll share more details later, as I brainstorm and pull it all together a bit more.   The cake is giving me the real trouble, as we design and make one ourselves every year (even if I don't bake the actual cake part myself), and my ideas so far would give even the Ace of Cakes a headache.  We wanted to do a Super Slide cake, but my brain won't make it work.  I can't figure out how I could keep the actual cake from sliding away itself once we reach a certain height.  Ugh.  Hey, Cakehead, you are the cake wiz--  any carnival themed cake ideas?

For now, back to work.  Back to This American Life.  Back to pondering the myriad ways I can distract myself from work...

Twitter, anyone?

Birth of a Goose

Exactly one year ago, we welcomed our baby boy into the world.

Happy Birthday, Cheeks!

Now that you are a big boy, it's time to drop the baby blog nickname.  From now on, Cheeks will be Goose.  It's a play on his real name and a nod to his terrible habit of sharp, unexpected nips with those new teeth of his. 

So, then, Happy Birthday, Goose!

In celebration of one of my favorite days, here is Goose's birth story, as written on our personal family photo website shortly after he was born.  I've edited it a bit for this version, changing the names.  I'm seriously fighting the urge to spruce it up a bit, as the style is pretty sparse compared to how I usually write on this blog, but I'm going to leave it as I wrote it just days after Goose was born.  Still hopped up on Percocet and apparently with no patience for my usually articulate (read:  wordy) self. 

I love birth stories, and I hope you get a kick out of one of mine.  A quick word of warning:  there is a bit of blood in a picture or two below.  I could have chosen to share with you some totally cleaned up photos, but I feel like I know my readers well enough to know that ya'll would appreciate the photo of the exact moment that I touched Goose for the first time.  In any case, you've been warned.

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Such a wild night! Goose's birth story:

It's 2 a.m. and I'm thinking, "Wait, I can't remember...  are these what contractions felt like?"

After timing them myself for an hour, I woke Maguire up, timed them another hour, then decided to head to the hospital with my mom in tow.  We arrived at the hospital at 5 a.m. to find that I was 3 cm dilated.  Thinking we had time, the doctor on call for our OB practice decided to give our OB some more "beauty sleep" before calling her in.  No need to see a doctor for quite some time, right?  Wrong.

At a little after 6 a.m. (less than an hour later), I had zoomed to 7 cm dilated and Goose seemed to have arrival plans a little more pressing than any of our doctors had anticipated.  The nurse called the on-call doc, who hopped in his car and started trying to reach my OB.  Hmmm, at this point it would be nice to have a doctor here, folks.  My water breaks, the nurse checks me, and I then hear a fierce whisper across the room to "find any doctor and get them in here NOW!"  Aah yes, just what I wanted to hear.  

Of course, my mom tells me that at that point I had abandoned my hopes to see my own OB or at least a doctor from that office and was pleading for "any doctor, any doctor, any doctor!"  Goose and I were flying solo on this mission, no meds, and I'm thinking the pain was talking for us at that point.  Yikes.

I'm not entirely sure what happened from there, other than I thought the nurse was helping me along, checking my dilation, as she kept urging me NOT to push.  Apparently, I was confused, though, because my mom and Maguire tell me that she was not, in fact, checking me...  she was holding the baby in with her hand until a doctor came!  Yeah, that would be that "any doctor!" thing.

Cue the exciting "ER" music now...  they find a doctor in the showers (at least, I hope he was a doctor), he runs into the room (still wet), they throw on his scrub apron/ gown thing, they slip something under me (who knows), I hear "okay, you can push now," I push one time and Goose comes flying out like a baby missile in one shot-- head, shoulders, body, all the way to tiny toes-- all at once!  The doctor literally catches him in mid-air.  

Goose clearly didn't have time for any of that "he's crowning" crap that other babies do; once he commits, he commits! 6:54 a.m., less than 2 hours after arriving at the hospital, less than 4 hours after my first inkling of a contraction, and Goose arrives with determination and a fierce flair for the dramatic in one (quite literally) explosive shot.

Although friends and family had wanted to be there for the birth, we were obviously lucky to even have a doctor there.  Fortunately, Maguire and my mom were by my side the whole time.  Enjoy the photos and join us in welcoming Baby Goose.

Strength to Take

Oprah loves Oprah a little too much for my liking, so I rarely watch her show.  I think she's fabulous, but I can only take so much.  Earlier this summer, however, I did catch about five minutes of a segment with the life coach Martha Beck and it has stayed with me ever since.  In fact, it resonated with me so much that I immediately turned off the show so that my memory of it wouldn't be muddled by a bunch of other random Oprah-lovin' and "light bulb moments."  One was enough for me.

I thought about it again this week after reading the comment Shauna of Up in the Night left in response to my Johnny Depp Love Fest.  Because, as Megan at SortaCrunchy pointed out, it was all really just a Megan Love Fest.  Shauna said that she's "decided it takes a really good mommy to get away and truly enjoy the time alone."  I couldn't agree more.  Not because I want to toot my own horn as a great mom (which I am, who are we kidding? :> ), but because it is worth mentioning that taking time for yourself and allowing yourself to actually enjoy it can be a difficult decision and even more difficult execution.

So back to that Oprah show.  I found this great synopsis of the episode on Mom Writes taken from the synopsis available at oprah.com (which I never would have found on my own):

Martha explains to Wendy that if she wants her son's forgiveness, she must first forgive herself. "Our children model what we do to ourselves, not what we do to them. So if you see unforgiveness in his eyes, it's because you're not forgiving yourself," Martha says. "Your only job is to learn to love yourself. The children, that's all they're waiting for you to do."

According to Martha, a mother who lives her life well is going to have happier children. "Let me tell you my favorite story from a psychiatrist who spent 20 years dealing with neurotic patients. They'd always say, 'I know my mother loved me, but…,' and then they'd go into the problems," she says. "One day she met a really, really healthy man, and she thought, 'Gee, I wonder what a normal person's mother is like?' She never heard that. … She thought he would say, 'My mother loved me perfectly. She made no mistakes at all.' Instead, he said something she had never heard before from a patient. He said, 'My mother loved life.'"

Martha says parents who neglect to love themselves raise kids who don't show themselves self-love, either. "They don't treat themselves the way you treat them. They treat themselves the way you treat you," she says.

This bears repeating:  Your children don't treat themselves the way you treat them.  They treat themselves the way you treat yourself.

Being a stay-at-home martyr doesn't help anyone.  Breaking your back to devote your life to your family (or anyone or anything outside of yourself) will be for naught if you don't make yourself a priority.  If all you want in the world is for your family to be happy and healthy, and in trying to reach that goal you neglect yourself, all of your work will be wasted because they will only be as happy or as healthy (figuratively speaking) as you are yourself.  More specifically, only as happy as you allow yourself to be.  As you show them that it is okay to be.

I hesitated to tell ya'll about my little break for myself last week.  I didn't want to have to hear any "must be nice..." comments, as I knew I would feel compelled to defend my choice to take a breather.  I felt like I would feel like I needed to justify why I did it, explain that I knew I was lucky to have the opportunity to do so, give a nod of respect to those laboring mothers out there that haven't gone to a movie in years, and so on and so forth.   Defend defend defend.

Instead, I realize that I should be proud.  By taking that breather, I was and am doing right by my family.  I was teaching my boys and my husband an invaluable lesson about respect and self-respect. 

I mean, seriously, what do I think there is to gain by being a stay-at-home martyr?  When was the last time you saw a group of teenage boys or even husbands hanging out together and saying, "Man, you should see my mom (or wife) slave away all day and never take any time for herself.  She's something else.  Let's talk about how amazing she is and how she just gives and gives and gives and never takes.  Man, I suck." 

Ha!  Right.

But I have seen teenage boys and husbands remark that their mother or wife is laid back or, in a round-about way, that she takes things in stride.  I have actually heard the offhand (lest their friends think they love her too much) remark tossed out by a teenager, "No, actually, my mom is pretty cool."

What better way to instill the kind of confidence it takes for your older kid (or, yes, husband) to admit that they've got it good with you than to live a happy life?  And if that means sometimes living that life without them hanging off of you every waking moment, then so be it.

Room to breathe means room to grow.  Aaaaaaahhhhhhhh.

Feet propped up, waiting for Johnny Depp to take the screen.