Feeling a Bit Like a Fraud

Seems like I usually talk about all the good things on this blog...fun crafts, beautiful trips, good parenting, funny things the kids say, and so on.

Today I just had an icky day with the kids. Their daycare was closed for Veteran's Day, so they were with me the whole day. Evidently I have lost the ability to entertain/wrangle/stand to be with my kids for that long. That's really embarrassing to admit.

We only got about 1/2 hour of playing outside, they were seemingly especially active/wrestling/jumping off furniture/not listening/screamy/weepy, and except for a few golden moments (we played an impromptu game of Go Naked Fish -- Go Fish, but everybody gets to see the cards because 3 year olds can't hold them up properly! -- a little craft project, and building a gnome village/castle/museum complex out of blocks) the rest of the day was filled with tears, yelling, and overall unhappiness.

I also spent about an hour in their room trying to get them to take a nap, only to find them "waking up" a half hour later. That's the worst for me, getting no down time when we've had a bad day, and them already tired from a very minimal nap yesterday.

And somehow their daycare provider gets them to take naps simply by having them lie down! Grrrr.

So there won't be any pearls of Waldorf wisdom today, nor any NVC methods-in-action. Though I am reminded by something funny I heard said by a presenter at a Waldorf homeschooling conference:

Some days, the best you can say is nobody got hurt!

I guess I can be satisfied with that.


**Edit: After musing on the day a bit, I can see that it wasn't really that bad. True, I didn't model the behavior I'd like for my children, and my needs weren't especially met. But everyone got fed delicious, nutritious meals, I ran a load through the laundry, and I did have some nice play time with the kids. Napoleona even celebrated my birthday by singing and giving me a cloth-wrapped "present." (She does this at least once a week. Today's birthday presents were two sand dollars, some postcards, and a picture drawn on their big DoodlePro.) We also had a silly hairdo moment in the morning, with all three of us adorned with tiny hair clips and pony tails or braids. Sorry, no photos.

Twittery post

Seems like short-attention-span land around here. Or maybe I'm just saving up all the thoughtful, meaningful posts for NaBloPoMo. Bwahahahaha...I'll never tell!

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It's raining here right now....we needed that. Though I'm sure the mold levels will now officially go through the roof, it's getting cooler and the leaves are really turning beautifully now.

Earlier today I was working by an open window when I heard a bunch of kids walking back to the Waldorf school from the playing field nearby...they were lustily singing "Doe, a Deer." Sweet.

SillyBilly evidently knows how to open his bedroom window. The one that looks out over the one-story drop down to the concrete outside the basement door. After some nausea- and tears-inducing freakouts (on my part), I think we've imparted to him that it's not OK to open the window. And I think he doesn't understand how to work the little tabs that pop out to stop the window from raising more than 3 inches. But I'm sure he'll get that one of these days...

We got out the down comforter from storage and put it on the bed last night. Mmmmm, snuggly. Now if it would only cool down again to merit it!

Imaginative play triumph #4,239: yesterday the kids were making "second breakfast" with their wooden play kitchen after we finished real breakfast. My dear little hobbits! And today, Napoleona was going around the house putting small, colored wooden blocks here and there, saying that they were candles..."cool ones, Mama, the ones that only burn you a little bit, for one day. The burning hot ones are for Christmas time. These are for Halloween night."

We splurged on going out to dinner tonight. Turkish food, yum. I am constantly amazed and grateful at the kids' ability to eat just about anything. We had baba ganoush, tomato/cucumber salad (Çoban Salatası) with shredded feta cheese, lamb kebab, and tiny dumplings (Mantı) in yogurt and tomato sauce, with rice pudding and caramelized milk pudding (Kazandibi) for dessert!

Still trying to figure out why the kids have been kinda whacked out the last few days. Perhaps it's just tiredness from the vacation...evidently they have been taking big naps at daycare. Or maybe it's their souls that are tired, from being driven all over creation and being away from home for so long, as Anthropapa suggested to me tonight. We'll have to spend some time outside in the fresh air tomorrow.

Stops and Starts

Tomorrow morning we're going on our insanely long road trip from NYC to Augusta, GA, with a "side trip" to Florida -- that's about 2200 miles (3500 km for my overseas readership). With two kids.

The last two days have been composed of not enough sleep and way too many errands. Grammy's here to play with and take care of the kids, who are totally amped up by her arrival and who haven't been sleeping as much as usual.

The last two days have also been peppered with odd experiences while running said errands. I thought I'd share them with my loyal 8-9 readers, just to give you all a taste of a day in the life of a suburban American mom.

The Department of Motor Vehicles

I realized on Thursday that it would probably be wise to re-register the car before our trip, since I had let the registration lapse. The first challenge was finding the DMV, which for some reason in this county is not in the most populous area. In fact it's in an area with many winding streets, and road construction that forced me off my Google-mapped route into unknown territory. After driving around fairly cluelessly for 5 minutes I got directions at a gas station.

This DMV functions differently than the ones I remember from California. Here, you have to first stand in the "Information" line (nowhere is that posted on any signs, just like many other things here, they just expect you to know these things), from whence you will be given your alphanumeric receipt. Multiple screens flash these codes to let people know when their turn will come, as well as being announced over an intercom. Very efficient, I guess.

I was glad of it however, when I suddenly realized that the title to the car only had Anthropapa's name on it, and I couldn't remember if the registration had only his name or mine as well. I did not relish the thought of filling out a long form, waiting God knows how long, and then being told to go away and try again another time.

The Information Line

The harried woman behind the counter listened to my question about the title, and told me she could look up the registration for me. I handed her the title and she tapped the numbers into her computer.

Then she sat and gazed at the screen for the longest time.

Then she typed in some more numbers, or possibly some letters. More gazing ensued.

Then she finally said that my name was there too, so she thought I could update the registration without Anthropapa's drivers license. She handed me my receipt.

To my utter shock, my number came up and was announced immediately. And I mean that I had only walked about 20 feet before I saw my number flash up there. I actually gasped, right there in the DMV. I had never before made it up to the counter at the DMV in under 30 minutes.

Window Number 8

I explained my predicament again to a slightly less harried woman. I feel that I have to describe this woman in some detail due to her interesting distinguishing features.

She was wearing sunglasses, evidently to shield her from the harsh glare of the fluorescent lighting. She appeared to have had a skin graft over the end of her nose and her upper lip. She had a delightful Jamaican accent, which made me think that at any moment she would tell me that my car was in fact registered to John Smallberries.

After taking the title and pecking around on her computer, the nice Jamaican lady then laid this one on me:

"I can't find your car. What's the licence plate number?"

I stammered something about having to go check but that I could remember the first three letters. Luckily, she found the car, told me the license plate number, and said that I could register the car all by my bitty self. Which I did, after filling out the form and paying the nice Jamaican lady $55. (Not a bribe, the actual registration fee for the next 2 years.)

Total time in the DMV? A mind-boggling 30 minutes. That's got to be some kind of record.

It's the Thought That Counts

When I went back out to the car, I thought to myself, why assume that Anthropapa will handle putting the registration sticker on the window (the logic being that all things car-ish are his domain)? I'll take care of it myself, and won't he think I'm so kind for thinking of it?

Now's the time to 'fess up that we do not in fact have a car per se, we have a good old fashioned gas-guzzing minivan. And this particular minivan has one of those protruding snouts that creates a very acute angle between the windshield and the dashboard. I was able to wedge a few fingers in there where -- somehow -- Anthropapa had put the last registration sticker. The sun was beating down on me through the glass, and I was feeling very thirsty, cranky, and tired.

Let's just say that I was able to pick off a 1x2 mm square piece of the old sticker, and shoved the new registration sticker into the glove compartment.

Expect light posting next week (as if there's been heavy posting lately), depending on whether Great-grandpa Fred's got Internet access and whether anything interesting happens. There have been rumors of fishing rods for the kids and way too many relatives in attendance, so who knows what might happen!