the cruelest month

maura @ 8:53 pm

Oh yes, April sure was full, and only sometimes with fun stuff. In brief (and in order):

– We visited my dad in VT
– I got a really heinous head cold
– Me + Jonathan did the dinner/silent auction fundraiser at Gus’ school, which raised a lot of dough (yay!)
– Gus got strep throat and was out of school for almost a week
– I got an AWFUL stomach flu (plus fever!) for 3 days. My mom came up to help and she + Jonathan insisted I go to to the ER, which was actually sort of a nice break from Gus, who’d been a bit feral

And that was that.

Now it’s May and things are better. Finally it’s mostly warm out — Gus and I hit the botanic gardens yesterday after school with our neighbors to play in the pink snow (what he calls the piles of fallen cherry blossoms) and smell the lilacs (purple smell better than white, says he [and I agree]). This weekend our whole building is having a stoop sale which makes me very happy: I get to get rid of our old stuff, make a few bucks, and hang out with the neighbors for a few hours, fun!

I also got four (4!) books out of the library last week, so the great nonfiction drought is over. Powered through the Mamaphonic book* and am really enjoying Unconditional Parenting a lot, much more than I expected, actually. Of course, the problem with any book espousing a parenting philosophy is that what sounds good on paper is often hard to put into practice in the field, when your 3.5 yr old is throwing his shoes down the hall steps rather than bringing them into the house, for example. But I’m game if he is.

*Man I am a SUCKA for the mothering essays. A stone cold sucka. Maybe it’s because they sustained me during that very tough first year with Gus, the no-sleeping-painful-breastfeeding-fussy-baby year. Maybe it’s because I worry that my brain is completely atrophying, and want to reassure myself that other moms feel this way too. Anyway, I at least have stopped buying them — they’re the ultimate literary candy for me and it’s just way more economical to get them from the library.

And anyway, it’s not totally Gus’ fault my brain is mushy. That started before he was born. I’d planned to tell you all about it, but Lost and Alias are almost finished taping and I have a date with 2 weeks worth of unfolded laundry, so I’ll catch you later.

time, but no mind

maura @ 10:38 pm

Our bags are packed + ready to go, the alarm is set for 6am tomorrow (oof!), and the car to the airport is reserved for our trip to visit one of our 4 grandparental households, which means that I actually have time to write here. I write spazzy little blog entries every freaking minute in my head, it seems, so why can’t I think of anything to say?

I’ve gotten sucked into reading the (mostly parental) blogiverse lately. It’s so easy to bounce from place to place, read about everyone’s kids and the adorable + infuriating things that they do. Let’s add something from my own day to the mix, shall we?

ADORABLE: Gus woke up from his nap today by saying, “I’m ready to wake up now because I’m not tired anymore”, ran out, Ringo Starr bedhead flying, into the living room, and plopped immediately down to play with his fire truck, as if he’d been thinking about it the whole time he was napping, that he Just Couldn’t Wait to get up and play with it again.

INFURIATING: So then our friends S (mom) and E (daughter) called and I invited them to come over to play, and suddenly he fell into a post-nap grump and said he didn’t want E to come over, which bummed me since we haven’t seen them in a while (and, since I worked at home today, I hadn’t seen another grownup all day besides Jonathan). So S and I chatted on the phone for a while, then suddenly Gus said “I do want E to come play with me,” by which point E had fallen into an accidental nap. Grrr. I believe the spirited kids book calls it “negative first reaction” + “slow adaptibility”.

Also, I am out of things to read (at least nonfiction things, which are my chosen things lately), which is my grownup infuriating thing of the day. Still waiting for a few requests to come in at the library, as well as being pissed off that I can’t get the Mimi Smartypants book or the most recent Ayun Halliday books there (a necessity since our puny leisure budget is pretty much all spent visiting child-friendly restaurants with playdates these days, for sanity’s sake [grownups to talk to, plus beer!]). If I had a laptop or miniPC-type thing I could read the blogiverse while Away From My Desk, but I’d rather hunch over a good juicy Why-America-Doesn’t-Support-Families or Anti-Consumerism tome these days. These are the kinds of books I’ve been into recently (minus the homeschooling stuff, I just can’t get behind that, but maybe that’s because Gus is such a huge spaz). Yes, I’m a humorless hippie, you can stop reading right now.