Ask Me 'After'

Does this sound familiar to any of you?

Mom, after my nap can we go outside and play with water balloons?

Mom, after I finish my vegetables can I have some graham crackers?

Mom, after I clean up my room, can I play with PlayDoh?

Mom, after school can we go to the park?

After, after, after. Sheesh! I feel like she's trying to back me into a corner. She will ask me can she do things/ have stuff hours before the after. Good grief!! And then, if I agree, you know what happens.

If you barely take a nap and you get up fifty times in thirty minutes and I finally throw up my hands and say forget it but you still want to go outside and play water balloons because I said we could, after.

If it takes you forty-five minutes to finish your vegetables and everyone else has already excused themselves from the table and I've already finished cleaning the kitchen but you still want graham crackers because I said you could, after.

If I pick you up from school and the weather report is calling for thunderstorms but it's not actually raining at the moment and I try to explain this to you but you have a hissy fit because I said we could, after.

New rule....don't ask me now. Ask me after!

Can we go to the park after school? Ask me after school.
Can I have a treat after dinner? Ask me after dinner.
Can I watch a movie after my nap? Ask me after your nap.

Ahhhh...much better.

From the heart.......

I am going through something right now and I really don't know what to do. I just have to let it rip, okay?

My daughter goes to a foreign language immersion preschool. It is a fairly new school and we've been with the school ever since it was still in the owner's home. Jade has absolutely blossomed in terms of her language acquisition. She can communicate well in both Japanese and French....even outside of school. She has gone up and started a conversation with people in Ikea who were speaking Japanese. So, I am very pleased with her language development.

Anywhoo, in my heart, I've always felt like a homeschooler. I have a well-defined educational philosophy which was heavily influenced by the book Dumbing Us Down. I believe in using the entire environment as the classroom. I reject out of hand the top-down approach to education where the teacher is the posessor of information and it is the job of the students to receive the knowledge. I believe in a child-led education environment, where children's natural curiosity is nurtured by a facilitator. I could go on and on, but I think you get the picture. So basically, the only way to give my children the kind of education I want them to have, the kind of education that is true to my philosphy, is to homeschool them. You are probably saying to yourself, 'well homeschool them, then!' aren't you? Not so fast.

I also highly value multilingualism and I can't give that to my kids if I homeschool them, since I am monolingual. Additionally, I have some other things I want to do with my life, in case you haven't noticed my 'About' section lately. May sound selfish, but I'm just being honest. Further, my situation is complicated by a lack of resources and by resources I mean money. I think I could easily homeschool if I could afford to hire a part time nanny (so I would have some time to work on my other interests), a regular housekeeper (I'm not good at cleaning now, forget about it if I'm homeschooling and pursuing my interests), memberships to every museum and cultural institute in my city (for field trips. remember, the entire world is the classroom) and regular travel. Don't forget money for the extracurriculars and of course, foreign language tutor. I'm so not exaggerating. If I were to homeschool, I would really want all of the above. Does that sound crazy?

To further complicate matters, I am not completely comfortable with Jade's school. It was fine when she was young, but now I am starting to be more critical of their curriculum and teaching methods. I know that my philosophy is almost impossible outside of a home environment, but still....I'm just not sure if the director knows what she is doing. I mean, she had a great idea and the resources to pull it off, but she is kinda making it up as she goes along.

What am I going to do? I feel so tormented over this issue. Am I denying my kids a valuable education over minute issues? Am I wanting to homeschool because I am a control freak? Do I need a reality check?
OR
Am I just sending my kids to school so that I can selfishly pursue my interests? Am I selling my kids and myself out by settling for less than the best education (best being homeschooling)?

School starts August 10. I have got to make a decision and I am so lost.
I welcome your opinions and suggestions.

You know how.......

....when your kids are small, you sometimes allow them to play with things that normally you wouldn't give them, but they are little and can't really hurt themselves or anything with it, so you give it to them? You know, like letting your small child play with a jar of nail polish because you know they can't open it? No? Just me? Well, that's good....'cause if you did, then this might happen....

Mother, Daughter, Wife, Sister, Friend

7:00am - My kids are up, I'm up. Combing hair, picking out clothes, preparing breakfast, playing, laughing, scolding, rushing.....getting the day started.

11:00am - I'm taking my dad to his Dr.'s appointment and to our local farmers' market. He brought a large cooler with him this visit and has plans to purchase ten pounds of the turkey sausage that they only sell at this farmers' market. He wants me with him when he gets his first PSA results after his surgery and he wants me with him at the farmers' market, to make sure he is getting the right kind of sausage.

4:00pm - I'm marinating a turkey breast in jerk sauce because I know that the Hubs loves jerk seasoning and we haven't had it in a while. I'm also taking care of some household business....faxing a document, calling the lawn guy, transferring money, etc.

8:00pm - I'm talking to my baby sister on the phone. I'm giving her advice on her relationship with her boyfriend, her relationship with our brother and our mother, talking to her professors, managing her employees at work, managing her supervisors at work and we end the conversation with a lesson in how to make macaroni and cheese.

11:00pm - I'm speeding on the highway, trying to make it as quickly and safely as possible to my girlfriend's house. She called me hysterical......she had to call 911.......her 2o month old is having trouble breathing.......her five year old is with her.......she can't find her husband.....
I'm on my way, I say.

2:00 am - I collapse into bed after seeing her five year old safely to a mutual friend's house for the night and staying with her at the children's hospital until her husband finally arrived.

No time to blog, too busy living!

Hello friends!
I am a little tied up. My dad surprised me with a drop in visit just in time for Father's Day. It was great because I had asked him if he would take me to this Father Daughter dance that the Hubs was planning on attending with Jade. Dad said he couldn't make it, but he and the Hubs conspired to surprise me and we ended up going as well. So much fun!

However, it's been a busy weekend with the Father Daughter dance, Father's Day and my dad still in town, so time is limited.

I'll be back at it in a day or two...or three, you know how it goes!!! ;)

Counting Calories, now? Say it ain't so!!!

I joined caloriecount.about.com this weekend, as I really try to get serious about my weight loss. This was my introduction and as I typed it, I realized that lots of my bloggy friends don't know the whole story, so here it is.

Hello!!

I am a just turned 30, stay at home mom of two great kids. My daughter Jade is 4 1/2 and my son Onyx is 18 months. I am 5'3 and currently 148 pounds. My goal weight is 125, but that is kind of my fantasy goal weight. I would be happy at 130, if I could stay right there.

My history with weight loss is tied to my sugar addiction and my emotional eating. I lost 30 pounds when I was in college. I had a demanding job and demanding school schedule and I ballooned up to almost 150. At the end of that semester, I got serious about working out and eating right. I was down to 120 and eventually gained back about 6 pounds, but held it steady at around 126 until after I got married.

After marriage and the stress of being a new wife, having a relative move in with me and working and going to school, along with having a job where the treats were plentiful (I was a private school teacher. Free lunch, candy for the kids, bagels in the break room, birthday parties, holiday parties.....you get the picture) within 9 months I was almost 140 again. 137 to be exact. I know because they weighed me at the Dr.'s office right before they told me I was pregnant. I had just told myself that I needed to go on a diet.

I have a condition called hyperemisis, so during pregnancy I have an incredibly vicious form of morning sickness that afflicted me for 5.5 months at all times of day. I lost 25 pounds in my first trimester. Over the course of my pregnancy, I gained 35 pounds for a net total of 10 pounds gained. Trust me, I was miserable and wouldn't wish hyperemisis on my worst enemy.

After I delivered Jade and began nursing, my weight stabilized at a lovely 126. Woohoo!!! I was ecstatic. Add 12 months of snacking like crazy, indulging almost every whim and I was still only 132. That's one thing I finally noticed about myself, I gain slowly and lose slowly which has deceived me in the past. But I'm empowered now because I recognize it. Anywhoo, a year later I was closing in on 140. I started a workout regimen, but barely changed my diet. To make a long story short, by the time I discovered that I was pregnant with my son, I was 157.

I knew what was going to happen and consoled myself with the fact that this time, I would definitely keep it off. As expected, I was absolutely miserable and couldn't keep any food down. The hyperemisis gets worse with each pregnancy and this time I lost 38 pounds in my first trimester. Again, I eventually started gaining and ended with a net gain of about 15 pounds. And again, once I delivered and began nursing I was around 124. I went to a formal dance about two months after I delivered my son and wore a size 4 designer gown. I looked incredible!!! Jaws dropped when I entered and all night I heard, "Didn't you just have a baby?" Oh, what a wonderful night that was. Too bad six months later I was already up ten pounds.

I knew the routine, so this time I really tried not to allow the same thing to happen, however, at the time I Didn't realize that I gain and lose slowly, so after a week of eating horribly, I would weigh myself and see no change, so I would keep eating what I wanted. Or after a week of working out and watching my diet, I would see no change, so I would say, "It's not working!" and go back to eating whatever. At my son's first birthday party I was 136.

I stopped nursing in March and have put on ten pounds since then. I am vowing to stop it right here and right now. I refuse to let sweets control my life. Because, basically that is my problem. I like sweets. Cookies, cakes, brownies, ice cream, sorbet; I like it, I want it. But not enough to watch my weight and health get out of control. I'm nipping it for myself and to be a good example to my kids.

Plus, I plan on rewarding myself with a boudoir photo shoot when I get to my magic weight. I think that will motivate me to keep it off.

Poor people shouldn't get fat

Because when people get fat, then their clothes don't fit. And if you're poor and you're clothes don't fit, then you can't buy new clothes that fit. Then you walk around town with clothes that look like this




and like this
So, if you are poor, do your best not to get fat. Or if you start to get fat, you might want to consider getting pregnant, because you can always borrow some maternity clothes and everyone will understand why you are getting fat. However, you better figure out a way to get unpoor should you decided to go that route because babies can be pretty expensive.
Or, if you are poor and you are getting fat, you better figure out how to get unfat.

Since I have no plans on having more kids, and I find myself in the aforementioned predicament, I've decided to get unfat. I'm on day 3 of the 30 Day Shred. I've heard some pretty awful things about Jillian Michaels, but she's not so bad. Of course, I am doing Level 1, the modified exercises and using two pound weights, but you gotta start somewhere.

Keep the Change

How was your weekend? Mine was very busy, but we still managed to get some relaxing in. Check out this hilarious situation from Saturday and let me know what you think....

Being the wonderful wife that I am, I decided to give my hubby a nice treat and take the kids out for the entire day on Saturday so that he could have some relax time. I know from first hand experience how rare it is to be alone in the house. You can go out to a coffee shop to grab a few minutes of alone time or you can have girls' night out, but how often do you have the luxury of being alone in your own home? For those of us with little kids, not very often. So, I took the kids out for the entire day. I left home around 11am and came home around 6pm. That's right, I even skipped their nap, opting instead to let them catnap in the car as we made the rounds visiting and running various errands.
There was just one stipulation....I asked hubby to clean the kids' bathroom (which had been out of order since my dad left more than a month ago). So basically, I asked him to do a chore that is normally mine and in exchange for doing me a favor, I would take the kids and give him some alone time. To thoroughly clean the bathroom would have only taken, at the most forty minutes. And that includes mopping the floor and cleaning the mirror. It's a tiny bathroom.


So tell me why I came home at around 6pm and hubby had not cleaned the bathroom. He was in good spirits, happy and appreciative of the alone time, but he hadn't cleaned the bathroom. But then he said, 'a deal's a deal and I will get right to it'.

Uh, dude, no. You were supposed to clean the bathroom while we were gone. Now that we are back, I'm ready to relax, not keep the kids away from you while you clean. The deal wasn't that you would clean the bathroom eventually, it was that you would clean the bathroom while we were gone. He didn't get why I was annoyed, so I gave him this analogy which I thought was pretty clever:

Honey, imagine a mother sending a child to the store to pick up a few items and telling the child to keep the change. Now imagine that the child goes to the store, doesn't get the items that the mom requested but instead spends all of the money on candy. Then the child comes back home and asks for more money to get the groceries. That's what you did.

That was a good analogy, right?

When is the right time to talk about it?

I've been talking about this all over FB, Twitter and Yahoo! groups, so excuse my brusqueness.
I took Jade and O to the library for storytime. I was just trying to fill our morning with a quick activity so that the kids would take an early nap, so that we could go swimming with friends in the afternoon.
Anywhoo, so we go to storytime and the librarian picks up the book Freedom Summer by Deborah Wiles. I'm thinking, okay.....never heard of this book, what's it about. Then the librarian reads the author's note. Sidenote- are you even supposed to read the author's note to the kids? Here is an excerpt from the author's note....

Also in the summer of 1964, civil rights workers in Mississippi organized "Freedom Summer," a movement to register black Americans to vote. It was a time of great racial violence and change. That was the summer I began to pay attention: I noticed that black Americans used back doors, were waited on only after every white had been helped, and were treated poorly, all because of the color of their skin ... and no matter what any law said. I realized that a white person openly having a black friend, and vice versa, could be a dangerous thing.

Okay, I'm thinking to myself, 'are you kidding?' I want to leave but I don't want to cause a scene and getting Jade to leave storytime before the story would definitely cause a scene. The librarian starts reading the story and it's all about two friends, one white and one black. After the passage of the Civil Rights Act, the town pours tar in the town pool rather than allow black people to swim in it. Is it just me or is this a little, um, heavy for story time?

I have a lot of issues with this.

1. Shouldn't there be some sort of warning if the subject matter is going to be uh, sensitive?
2. Isn't it my job as a parent to determine when and how I want to discuss sensitive topics with my children?
3. The slave trade, American slavery and the Jim Crow period that followed are very serious, very....what's the word I'm looking for.....layered, multi-faceted...deep. I think that conversations like these deserve more than a 15 minute story time. This would be an ongoing conversation in my house, but I don't want the library forcing my hand.

So, I want to hear from you. Tell me what you think. Am I overreacting or am I right that this was not a great choice for story time?

And while we are talking about it, what hard topics have you addressed with your young kids? One woman on Twitter told me that she had discussed Prop. 8 with her three year old. Uh, wowza!

Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!!

My blog was awarded!!! Can I just be really honest? I'm so happy to have finally won an award. I'm sure that you're not supposed to want awards, just like you're not supposed to want followers and you're not supposed to want comments, but I guess I'm just that shallow...I want it all and I don't mind saying it. LOL!!




Sometimes (I've heard from my other, more popular bloggy friends) awards can be a double edged sword in that they come with a bunch of strings attached. You know, tag 40 other bloggers, make a list of 800 random things about you, take a picture of yourself while standing on your head, etc. But my bloggy buddies know me for the sometimes slacker blogger that I am. These awards have no strings!! Wooohooo!!!

Cynthia K. gave me the lovely blog award and the timing is perfect because I get to pass it on to blogs that I've recently discovered and I just discovered an amazing blog! Now, a lot of my bloggy friends read this particular blog, but I had never heard of her before, so she is new to me.
Her name is Angela and her blog is Becoming Me. I'm newly in blog love. I'd also like to pass the award on to:

Shanta at Life As I Know
She's a stay-at-home mom of three who knits, crochets, sews, bakes, makes jewelry, etc. She is my hero and my nemesis at the same time! LOL!!

Dori at From A Yellow House In England
I'm just totally fascinated with expats

Sandi at Lucky 13 and Counting
Sandi has 13 kids!!! 'Nough said!!

and finally

Stormy at Wonder Woman
She is really an inspiration

Stormy gave me the 'Friends' award. I want to pass this award on to people with whom I feel that I am really developing a bloggy connection.

That would be

K at Interstitial Life
Kathy B! at The World According To Me
Martha at A Sense of Humor is Essential
The Rambler at My Rambling Thoughts
Cynthia K at Crumbs in the Minivan

These ladies make blogging fun for me because it feels more like a conversation with them.
And ladies, there are no strings attached to this award. Just sending some love!

Anywhoo, I would like to thank my very special bloggy friends Cynthia K. over at Crumbs in the Minivan and Stormy over at Wonder Woman for my first awards!!! Thanks so much. I feel sooooo special!!!

Preschool Pissing Contest

Oh, today was a great day friends! We woke up and The Hubs surprised me by taking us out to breakfast. Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day and we went to one of my favorite restaurants. So this was a wonderful surprise.
Then, even better, I convinced Hubby to take the kids for a little walk right after we ordered which made our meal so much more pleasant. They came back from their walk just as the food arrived.

Then after breakfast we took the kids to the park where I was picked up by another mom. Yes, she was drawn in by my mommy pheremones and she couldn't resist slipping me her number and begging to get a spot on O's playdate card. LOL!!

But the most hilarious thing that happened involved Jade. We were hanging around the monkey bars and I was explaining to Jade that you have to develop a lot of arm strength to go from just hanging on the bars, to swinging across the bars. She listened intently and then decided to give it a try. She was hanging on the first bar and you could see her willing one of her hands to move to the next bar, but she just couldn't bring herself to let go and try to walk across the bars.


While Jade was hanging there another little girl walked over, jumped on the bars and easily swung across. You can imagine that Jade was hot! The girl heard me explaining about the whole 'need a lot of arm strength' thing, so she said..."You also need a lot of arm strength to do this!" And she jumps off the monkey bars and does a semi-cartwheel. Well, Jade was just too put out! She jumped off the monkey bars and did a perfect cartwheel and ended with a flourish. She said, "I have a lot of arm strength and I can do a cartwheel the right way." The other little girl asks Jade, "How old are you?" Jade says with indignation, "I'm four!". The other girl says, "Well, I'm five!" And trounced away!!!
LOL!!!! Jade was not happy, but she felt like she had no comeback. I guess when you are a preschooler, age trumps all!!!

Granny Panties

We all have them, right? They are so comfortable yet so unattractive. I love my granny panties.




Unfortunately, my granny panties look a lot worse than those. I had planned to take a picture of my actual granny panties for this post, but guess what? I'm wearing them!!!!! ROFL!!!!

Yes honey, I can't help it. They feel sooooo good. When I go to get dressed, if I see the granny panties, they are going on! They never give me a wedgie, they hug my bum just right, I can wear them with almost anything. Ahhhhh......I love my granny panties.

I remember the day I bought them. What a glorious day it was. We were shopping at an outlet center. I stopped by the L'eggs Hanes Bali Playtex Factory Outlet Store. My lovely granny panties came in a package of three. This is what they looked like when they were brand new...


only mine are black.

Problem is, they are getting a little, uh, worn. My granny panties look like this now



Yes. My granny panties are holey. And not just on the side. I've got quite a few, ahem, vents in my granny panties. ;)

Have no fear, friends. This post has a happy ending. If you are like me and have some granny panties that you need to get rid of, Vicki's Secret is making it easy for us to replace them.

Here's a coupon for free panties at Victoria's Secret, no purchase necessary!!! Hurry, go get some. It expires today!!!
Go!!!!

Send Me Your Gold and I'll Mail You A Check (heh,heh)

Have you seen these commercials? Mail in your gold and we'll mail you a check. Okay, um, I may be a little slow here, but who in the world would do this? You are going to sell your valuables by mail to someone you don't know and you haven't even agreed upon a price? Yeah, this strikes me as just plain crazy.

And the commercials are hilarious! Have you seen the one that is directed towards *ahem* ladies of leisure? The company is called Out of Your Life.com. Now, when I first saw this commercial I thought it was just a different spin on the old 'mail me your gold' routine. But when I watched the commercial a couple of times on the website, I realized something different.

I can't post the commercial, but here are the reasons I believe that these commercials are specifically targeting the type of women who you would see on the Millionaire Matchmaker:

1. She names 6, count them, 6 men who have given her expensive jewelry that she is now selling.
   
2. She names two guys at the same time, implying that she was, uh, dating (and I use the term loosely) them simultaneously and she accepted expensive gifts from both of them.
3. She is currently wearing a HUGE engagement ring and planning a trip to Tahiti, Ireland or Italy....which implies that she is engaged or newly married and going on a honeymoon

Check out the commercial here and tell me what you think!