Yellow Wallpaper

After Monday's debacle I had been hoping to post a more upbeat post about how the week turned out better than I thought it would. But Monday night my throat started hurting and by Tuesday morning I was in the grip of a really horrendous cold. Tuesday was spent with a majorly sore throat and drippy nose, and then yesterday I had to deal with clogged sinuses and ears. Plus a bit of a fever and general body aches. Today I'm finally feeling better, although my head is still pretty stuffed up. I hope it clears before I get on an airplane this Saturday. I'm leaving on Saturday to spend a few days visiting with my sister in Oregon. Next week she is graduating with her bachelor's degree in nursing, and since she has come to so many of our graduations it is fun to finally get to go to hers. This week has been the end of a busy month for my bank account and my budget was not doing so well. So I've been trying to just use what I have instead of going to the grocery store; I us...

Life has actually been going along pretty smoothly here, so I guess it's inevitable that there will be a few bumps in the road. Both Mr. Fob and I agree that today was one of those really horrible days that pop up now and then. Hopefully it's not the beginning of a bad week. The stage was actually set last night when Mr. Fob ate two sloppy joes for dinner, as well as cake and ice cream and a lot of other things. He woke up with a very angry stomach this morning. I made the mistake of going to bed too late and didn't sleep well all night (plus there was a brief interlude at 2 AM to comfort a crying Little Dude). So I got up tired and grumpy and Mr. Fob got up feeling extremely ill. Then we looked out the window and saw the massive snowstorm that had already covered our new garden in at least a half inch of snow. It didn't let up for almost two hours; I had to go knock the snow off our trees that were bending to the ground. We'll have to evaluate our tomato plants tom...

The ladies at Segullah have a new anthology out that I really want to get and read. I read a review here and loved the first two quotes, one from Anne Morrow Lindbergh and the other by Sharlee Mullins Glenn. Lindbergh compares life to the ebb and flow of the sea tides, and Glenn compares motherhood to a dance, in which we have to be flexible and try to work together. I've been thinking about these kinds of things lately. A while ago I was reading someone's blog post about breastfeeding where she was complaining about the term 'feeding on-demand'. She didn't like the fact that it made the baby sound like some sort of taskmaster with the mother as her obedient slave. For this woman, nursing is more of a relationship, a give-and-take. I also resonated with that; sometimes my baby leads, sometimes I lead, but we try and work things out together. This week I've been riding the ups and downs of parenthood as usual. Some days I think 'wow, I really feel like things...

Germany : We colored the flag and read some informational books as well as a collection of fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm. S-Boogie thinks we need to move to Germany because then she would only go to school part of the day and her dad would have paid vacation time each year. I don't think that sounds so bad. For dinner we had some bratwurst cooked with cabbage and apples, served with boiled potatoes. It was delicious. Ghana: We colored the flag and read a few books about Ghana as well as several storybooks. The kids especially loved this one and we read it many times. For dinner I made jolof rice with shrimp (I sort of followed this recipe and didn't add other meats besides shrimp) and some avocado with peanut dressing . They were both pretty tasty. We also made some banana cupcakes with cream cheese frosting for a treat; not totally Ghanian, but they do eat a lot of bananas there. Greece: We colored the flag and read a few books, including this adaptation of a myth. I...

By the way, that was one of my favorite Primary songs when I was a kid. I think they hardly ever sing it anymore. Sad. S-Boogie has just two weeks of school left before summer vacation. After growing up in California it still is strange to me that school ends before Memorial Day. And it feels strange to have a child who is beginning second grade next year. Naturally I've been trying to figure out what we're going to do this summer. This is the first time in about five years that we won't be moving or having some other sort of upheaval during the summer. That part of it is nice. The sudden transition to having both children home all the time is not so nice. We will definitely be participating in the library's summer reading program, and they often give out coupons as prizes so we will be able to do some fun things with those. This summer I will also have S-Boogie only count books that she has read herself. Her reading still isn't really great (she mostly just uses si...

--Mother's Day was very nice yesterday. We kept things simple since we had just celebrated my birthday the week before. Mr. Fob bought me a lovely potted plant (I'm trying to make our house more green; hopefully I won't kill it) The kids sang in church and brought me notes from Primary. Little Dude drew a picture of his favorite thing that we do together: unloading the dishwasher. When asked to describe me, S-Boogie said that my best friend is Mr. Fob and that my favorite place to be is home. The baby contributed to the day by taking a two-hour nap in the afternoon and by not screaming at bedtime. --Baby P seems to be settling into a decent daytime routine and often takes a fairly lengthy morning nap as well as an afternoon one. Last week she had a bit of a cold and was grouchy, but during the last few days she seems to be feeling better. I've also noticed that she is starting to actually play with the toys on her little baby gym. --I've been making bread for us dur...

Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg I thought the title of this book and the cover both seemed a bit hokey, but it had been recommended to me by several different people so I thought I'd give it a try. While I didn't agree with everything in the book and I don't think all the tips would work with children (and they weren't intended to--that's just who I spend most of the day with), I did glean some useful ideas from it and have been trying to use some of them in my life. Midwives by Chris Bohjalian This was our book club pick this month, and while I've read it once before I didn't remember much from the last time (about ten years ago). This time I found that I didn't like it as much; the second half of the book is all courtroom drama, and that can really drag. I also felt like the author was trying to make a statement about home birth by depicting the most extreme situation possible. We did have a good discussion about it and it's a fairl...

Yesterday was my birthday, and I discovered that the nice thing about a Sunday birthday is that you can spend Saturday celebrating too. The only not-so-nice thing is that staying out late on Saturday makes morning church painful. It was still a lovely weekend and now I just have to get used to the fact that I am thirty-two years old. Where does the time go? By the way, my first official date with Mr. Fob was on my birthday nine years ago. He brought me flowers and a book, and took me out to lunch. Nine years? Where does the time go? On Saturday we had hopes of sleeping in, but our lovely children decided to get up around 7:00. We let them watch TV for a bit while we ignored them. Then we all had breakfast together and spent some time cleaning the house. After that I decided to go get my hair cut since it had been a few months. As I was preparing to leave, our mail carrier stopped by with a package from my mom that included some birthday funds, so I took that with me to the mall and sto...