Month: May 2017

Dreaming of summer and thinking about school

/ davamarie / 1 Comment

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I’ve been so excited about summer, which I’m sure is obvious from all of the gushing I do about being in the yard with the kids (I’m pretty sure I started writing about that in February). It got cool again after it was play-in-the-sprinkler hot for about three days in a row, and I was downright grouchy about the change in weather. I’m ready for summer clothes and cold drinks on the patio and hose water everywhere you look. And fireflies, of course. I’m dying to see if we get fireflies in our yard (we moved here in November, so we haven’t seen a summer yet).

The swing set plans and hardware have arrived, the lumber is on its way, and Papa Doc has promised to get started with the lumber prep and to let Jonah help with the building. We’re going with this model, which is going to take up a pretty large section of our backyard, but as Kristin reminded me, “that’s what the yard is for.”

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I read a piece by one of my favorite bloggers the other day on summer hacks for moms and it got me even more excited about coming up with fun things to do, both for the kids and as a family. I really want to set up a “dirt kitchen” in a back corner of the yard where there’s too much shade for any grass to grow. I’d also forgotten how much the kids love to paint outdoors with water, so I need to pick up a few paintbrushes on my next trip to the hardware store. I’ve already whipped up a batch of homemade bug spray, we have plenty of sunscreen, now we just need to figure out some sort of storage for the toys that are always strewn across the patio, but I’ll get there. It’s only May.

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The kids will end their “school year” the same day that Kristin does (by design), which is in three weeks. I am a little bit worried that I’m setting myself up for disappointment, since I don’t actually get a summer off with the kids. Kristin does, and I know that there are more relaxing ways to spend a summer, but I’m still a little bit jealous. We aren’t planning on taking any major vacations this summer because of finances, so I might plan a staycation or two, and we may take some long weekends to do things we’ve been dreaming about that are within driving distance (the Indianapolis Children’s Museum, the Dark Sky Park, and maybe Chicago by train).

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We’ve been doing a lot of bike riding as a family lately, and this is the twins’ first time doing so since the bikes were in storage all last summer, and the previous year they were too young to ride along. We were fortunate to get a hand-me-down trailer from a neighbor we didn’t even know (thanks, Facebook!) and Jonah still (barely) fits in his seat, so we’ve been able to do some longish rides, both around our neighborhood and beyond. I’ve been loving this, and most nights after the kids get home from school, if the weather is decent, I end up proposing that we go for a quick ride after dinner.

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Even though I’m pretty fixated on summer, I’ve also been thinking a lot about school lately. I may have mentioned before that we love our preschool. We considered sending Jonah to kindergarten this coming fall (he’s too young to make the cut off, but he falls into an in-between group that is allowed to apply for a waiver and attend early). The financial savings of moving him to public school would be huge, but we feel like he needs another year of preschool for a variety of reasons. He’ll be much better off in the long run. As a result, we’re facing an additional year of three-kids-in-private-preschool, which makes up an astronomical portion of our budget. When we crunched the numbers, we gave serious thought to moving them to a less expensive school. I toured a couple, Kristin visited my favorite of the two and agreed that it seemed awfully nice, but in the end we decided not to move them. Why?

Well, in large part because the kids love it, and we love it, and they’re comfortable and happy there and we moved them across the country last summer. It just didn’t seem fair to move them again, especially Jonah who will then change schools yet again the following year when he does go to Kindergarten. But it also came down to what we believe education should be. Kristin and I don’t agree on everything (I read this one evening and was practically cheering, while the teacher in Kristin just couldn’t get on board), but we do value a lot of the same fundamentals when it comes to childhood and early learning.

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The preschool that our kids attend operates in a Montessori style. There are multiple rooms that are set up to support specific types of activities, and for nearly all of the day the children are free to select rooms and activities as they please. They go outside twice a day unless the weather is foul, and they have the most incredible outdoor play space I’ve ever seen at a school of any kind. It’s the kind of school that warns parents at the start of the year that when it gets warm, they will fill up a trench with the hose and let the kids sit in the mud if they please, so don’t send your children in clothes that you care about. We also love that a large number of the teachers there have been in early childhood education, many of them at this same school, for 30 or 40 years. There’s a wisdom there that you don’t find at every preschool, and we’ve gained a lot from it.

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The school that we considered moving them to felt more like a charter school (in my limited experience, but also in Kristin’s). Spotless, well-organized classrooms assigned by age, lots of information for parents on “assessment” methods. Jonah has already said that he’s excited about Jude and Vivienne being “upstairs” with him next year (the toddlers are in the basement) and as far as we could gather from the other school, they wouldn’t have crossed paths much. We want them to have that year together. I think that it’s good for their relationship.

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Exploring with total freedom, learning through play, getting dirty, being out in nature, this is the kind of education that we believe in. Kristin made a good point that this may be the last year that we end up educating them in a way that we truly believe in, and that made me very sad, but also gave me the courage to send them back there this fall despite our financial concerns. I read an article just a day or two ago about Germany’s outdoor preschools and thought to myself, yes, that is what I want for our children, but I want a variation of it for more than just preschool.

I recently stumbled upon an Instagram feed called Wild & Free that focuses on home schooling (or maybe unschooling is more like it). While we’re not really in a position to home school, not to mention the fact that we moved here largely for the free college that’s associated with attending the public schools all the way through graduation, I sometimes dream of living in the Montana wilderness and raising and educating our kids away from everything, outdoors more than in, away from the plague of standardized testing and schools that suck all of the joy out of learning. When I see our kids stopping to follow a caterpillar on its journey, and can see Jude’s smile from behind because of his adorable cheeks, I know that it’s that kind of natural curiosity that leads to real growth.

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And the amount of passionate observation and curiosity that has come from a mother robin building a nest on the trellis outside Vivi’s window, the way we all talk about and check on those robins at least 50 times a day,  the way the kids all come running when one of us sees a hungry baby’s head pop up, and all of the things Kristin and I have looked up about robins either to tell the kids or just because we’re curious, it’s all just so authentic and wonderful.

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We didn’t move to a ranch out west and we don’t even own camping equipment, so I can’t pretend to be rejecting modern conveniences or a suburban life. When it comes to our kids and their education, however, I kind of want more, and I wonder what we can do to make up that difference when they most likely end up in public school as planned. We love our home and we don’t really want to move to the wilderness, but many things lately are conspiring to make me think outside of the box and wonder how we can merge the two worlds to bring our children more of this magic, even when they’re trapped in a classroom that may not be very magical.

Until then, there’s summer, and I’m going to squeeze in as much magic and wonder as I possibly can. I’m off to make a summer bucket list.

Things I’m not taking for granted this Mother’s Day

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As soon as I opened my eyes this morning, Jonah leaned over and said, “Happy Mother’s Day,” and gave me a hug. It was so unexpected and wonderful because no one reminded him to say it. He was the first one up and was just waiting for me to wake up. So often lately he’ll pause whatever he’s doing and say, “Mama D,” and when I look at him he’ll hold up the ASL sign for “I love you,” before going back to whatever he was up to.

I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about things that I don’t want to take for granted. The sentiment feels slightly different (to me) than saying “things that I’m grateful for,” because more than just blessings, these are things that could easily be overlooked. Jonah is such a noticer; we often marvel at his ability to overlook no detail, to forget virtually nothing. His appreciation of beauty is finely tuned. And watching him notice has made me long for those childlike senses that haven’t yet learned to tune so much out. 

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We spent the entire day at home today (well, Kristin ran to the hardware store to pick up our mower this morning, and then went to get hamburger buns, but the rest of us never left). We’d wanted to go for a family bike ride but our bikes are in the shop for a tune up and weren’t ready in time. We talked about going someplace to do something fun, but after spending the morning in the backyard, the kids had absolutely no interest in leaving. We spent the whole day in the yard and it was perfect. So in honor of Mother’s Day, a brief list of things that I’m not taking for granted today:

Having a house and yard that the kids love so much that they don’t want to go anywhere else. Where Jonah often says, out of the blue, “I love this place. Let’s live in this house for 120 years.”

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Having the perfect apple tree that shades the patio enough that we can spend the entire day out there without worrying about getting too much sun.

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Our kids being young enough in this stage of our lives that they are enrolled in zero clubs/sports/extra curricular activities (and don’t miss them at all) so that we are able to wake up every weekend and have an entirely blank canvas open to our design. We don’t yet need to divide and conquer events and practices, we can spend every moment as a family, and can start the weekend by asking the kids, “what should we do today?”

Being able to sit on the patio and flip through a magazine today, and looking over at this view (I put down the magazine and took the picture and then went back to the magazine without ever leaving my chair) knowing that this life is everything I’ve ever wanted.

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Having a partner who is an amazing mother, who keeps everything together when work takes me away from home, who is willing to do the hard work of trying to be the best parents we can be, who remembers to say “thank you” all the time, who makes up songs and dances better than I ever could, who has the patience of a saint when Vivienne wants to sing and chatter on for 30 minutes past bedtime and Kristin is captive in her bed, and who has Jonah convinced that she truly loves to sit down and play legos with him and appreciates being asked to wipe his bottom, “because you love to help me.”

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Having parents who showed me what it looks like to work hard, take care of a family and household, and do what needs to be done without complaint, but also the importance of joy and family time above a spotless home. Having my parents alive and well and nearby, not only willing but enthusiastic about helping us to make our house a home. They get back to town in a couple of days and we can’t wait to spend time in the yard with them, making it even better. More than that though, I can’t wait to be able to include them in our lives in an everyday, no-big-deal sort of way (but without taking it for granted).

Never having spent a Mother’s Day longing or grieving. I just realized today that we didn’t start trying to get pregnant until late May or early June of 2011, so although our journey to start a family felt long and challenging and included many months of disappointment (10, to be exact), by the next Mother’s Day I was pregnant and we celebrated with brunch and a trip to the baby store to wander through all of the gear that we’d eventually need.

I know that this day is a sad one for so many, either because they’ve lost their own mother, have a challenging relationship with their mother, have lost a child or a pregnancy, desperately want a child but have been unable to have one, have a challenging relationship with their child, or in so many other ways have complicated feelings about motherhood.

I do not take our life for granted for a second. So many people and steps and opportunities made our family possible, from our donor, to employers who gave us the time and space to drive to Connecticut for multiple medical appointments each month, to good health insurance that made those dozens and dozens of visits and procedures possible without us going bankrupt, to our amazing doctors and nurses, to my family who hoped and prayed with us for our dreams to come true (even buying a baby cradle before I was pregnant, because, my dad said, “to become, act as if”) and who showed up to help when those dreamed-of babies arrived, to the midwives who helped bring our babies into the world, and to every member of our “village” both here and in New York who have helped us make it to where we are today. Without an incredible amount of privilege combined with random luck, these three wonderful people wouldn’t be ours. I’m so very glad that we are theirs.

Happy Mother’s Day.

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A patio furniture makeover (or “why buy it when you could spend three weeks ruining your garage floor”)

/ davamarie / 1 Comment

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When it comes to home projects I wouldn’t say that I’m especially handy. When the people on home shows are searching for a fixer that they can “put their stamp on” I’m genuinely perplexed. Sure, I have a small and modestly equipped toolbox and a cordless drill, and according to Jonah that makes me a construction worker, but I cannot imagine why anyone would want to spend every weekend engaged in manual labor if they didn’t have to.

Now that I’m a homeowner, however, I’m beginning to see the appeal of learning how to care for and maybe even improve our space a little bit. And if I can do it myself while saving some money, that’s even better, right?

We were fortunate to get a number of money-saving hand-me-downs from my parents when we moved into the house, and one of those was a patio set that my parents have had since I was around Jonah’s age. I have lots of memories of it in the backyard where I grew up, and I love that it has so much history. It’s a nice sturdy wrought iron set, but two of the chairs were broken, and the whole set had some rust and a lot of wear.

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When my parents gave it to us, my dad suggested that we could paint it if we wanted to, and both K and I thought that sounded like a fun way to brighten up the backyard. I’ve never spray painted anything in my life, so I had few appropriate expectations going into this project. I did a little bit of Pinterest exploration to gather tips, chose a color that we were excited about (Rustoleum Lagoon), and went shopping for supplies.

I was thinking of painting it on the patio, and I’m so glad that I called my dad beforehand to say, “How on earth do I do this? Isn’t it all going to end up covered in leaves and flower petals?” He told me that the garage was a far better choice (no kidding) so I spread out a number of plastic tarps across the center of the garage, moved the furniture inside, and got to work. After washing it and letting it dry, I started with a coat of Rusty Metal Primer, which turned it all a solid rust color.

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This phase of the project gave me a pretty solid understanding of how unpleasant this whole experience was going to be. I learned a number of valuable lessons, which I will now pass along to you, dear reader.

  1. Have appropriate protective clothing, gloves, and footwear. I failed to buy/have appropriate painting clothes (I tossed a lot of old stuff in the move) so I started in an old t-shirt and leggings, with plastic grocery bags tied over my shoes. It didn’t take long to realize that when you step in paint on a thin plastic tarp while wearing grocery bags as shoes, your feet will stick to the tarp and tear it to shreds. Also, if you have a lot of exposed skin, you’ll end up scrubbing paint off of your face, arms, and ankles with industrial hand cleaner like I did. It was only after the first day that it occurred to me that I should probably also have a mask on, since the fumes are absolutely awful, and that eye protection wasn’t a bad idea. Those also prevented a lot of the face paint issues.
  2. Buy way more paint than you think you’ll need. The first challenge was that no one seemed to carry the color that we wanted in gloss, which is what we were interested in. We initially bought the six cans that our local Walmart had in stock, thinking that surely it would be sufficient (which is so completely laughable at this point, since this project required so much paint), and ultimately ended up also buying the last four on Amazon as well as an additional four at a Walmart two hours away. I also used a clear gloss coat because the paint guy recommended it and…I mean, it can’t hurt, right? I had no idea what I was doing, but I can tell you first-hand that running out of paint when you’re all suited up and just want to finish this beast is not a lot of fun.
  3. Tarp everything. I’m so glad that we didn’t do this on the patio because our house would probably be teal right now. While I put tarps down on a pretty wide area, a huge portion of the garage floor (a perimeter of at least a couple of feet on all sides) is teal now, as is a portion of our driveway, the threshold of the door to the mudroom, and a plastic car of Jonah’s is covered in a fine layer of rusty metal primer. I had no idea how far spray paint spray would fly, and I’m sure that being outdoors only exacerbated the problem. Fortunately K has been very understanding about this.
  4. Budget lots of time. I waffled about including this one, because if you’re a skilled spray painter and you’re highly efficient, you can probably do this far more quickly than I did. Here’s the thing though: spray paint is weird. You either have to finish the job within an hour (or so) or you have to wait something like 48 hours to put on your next coat. Because we kept running out of paint I wasn’t able to finish very much of it in one block of time, so I’d get a layer on and then know that I had to wait at least two days before I could come back to it. The whole thing took me two or three weeks of very spread out painting sessions.

When I was in New York, a friend asked me what project I was working on that I was really excited about. I asked her if it was possible to be excited about a project but also hate everything about the process. After finishing the table and knowing that I had four chairs ahead of me, I declared that we should have just bought new, colorful patio furniture. I’m not sure that we saved all that much money ($60 in welding to repair the broken chairs, roughly 25-30 cans of paint, plastic tarps, rubber gloves, disposable masks, safety goggles), and the process wasn’t the slightest bit enjoyable, but I do really like the end result. It makes the patio a lot more fun, and the kids seem to love it. They wanted to eat dinner at the table the first night that it was back out on the patio (even though it was something like 55 degrees out).

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While the furniture was in progress in the garage, they would come home from school and tell me how pretty the chairs looked, which was surprisingly gratifying.

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I’ve been looking forward to making our yard more playful, and I feel like this is a big step in that direction. My parents return from Charleston in a week’s time and the next big project on the agenda is a swing set (despite Jonah’s faith in my construction worker abilities, that’s way out of my league – we need to call in Papa Doc for that one). I’ve been debating between a kit and a total DIY approach and you would think that this experience would have made that choice clear, but since I expect a swing set to be a ton of work no matter how we slice it I’m still undecided. More to come on that one when it happens.

Mama K’s sneaky Mother’s Day surprise project

/ davamarie / 1 Comment

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I just got back from another work trip to NYC this afternoon. Since it was the second trip, we all went into it with a tad more confidence that we could get through it, but that didn’t make leaving easy. I was eager to get back to my family, and I knew coming home that today was going to be a little bit hectic because I’d be taking Jonah to a bouncy-house birthday party almost as soon as we left the airport. He fell asleep in the car on the way to pick me up, and I let him stay there and sleep while I ran into the house to quickly put on a clean shirt and throw my hair into a ponytail. At some point I stepped towards the great room and Kristin told me that I wasn’t allowed to go near the backyard because there was a surprise, but Jonah wanted to show me.

I took him to the birthday party and when we got back I mentioned that there was some sort of surprise. He remembered, and took me to the windows to show me two pretty blue planters (a hand-me-down we’d claimed from my parents old house when they sold it) full of flowers. Kristin knows how excited I’ve been to get our backyard and patio ready for a season of outdoor living, one of the most significant reasons that we moved back to Michigan in the first place, so she took it upon herself to do a planting project with the kids this morning as an early Mother’s Day gift for me. I got teary when she told me that they all participated and that she even made sure to take photos of the process because she knew how meaningful that would be for me. She was right. There’s nothing better.

I can’t narrate this project for you because I wasn’t here, but I’ll let the photos do the talking.

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See that table? It’s going to get its own post sometime soon. It’s my contribution to the patio-beautification effort and while I’m hating nearly every second of the actual process, I’m hopeful about the results. More to come when I finally finish.

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Naturally there were construction vehicles involved in the transferring of soil.

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There aren’t as many photos of Jude because, as K tells it, this project went the way most projects go: everyone started strong, and Vivienne was by far the most dedicated (although I feel like the photos show a pretty strong effort from Jonah as well). Jude was on his scooter for much of the planting, it seems.

Kristin even told me that now she feels energized to do lots more of this and really dig into gardening (see what I did there?). I hated yard work as a kid but I too have been feeling somewhat inspired and interested in figuring out what’s out in our yard and trying to make it beautiful. We’re total amateurs and right now the garden portion of the yard is about 80% weeds (we think – we honestly have no idea) but this Mother’s Day project is so inspiring and full of love, I can’t wait to do more with the kids. K knows me so well, and the photos put the love right over the top.