Pillow Talk

I love being married. It can be a helluva lot of work -- don't get me wrong -- but as a package deal, it's the greatest plan ever.

Among the things I love most about being married? I'm like a kid at a sleepover. Every. Single. Night.

I was always that kid at sleepovers, the last one whispering into the darkness "Is anyone else still awake?" I treasured the talking for what seemed like hours in the half-light of sleeping bags and pillows as my friends drifted off to sleep one by one. The conversations never really ended, they just got quieter and slower to be continued another day. 

Many nights now as the clock ticks toward midnight, my husband finally leans over, kisses me and says, "You can keep talking if you want to, but I'm falling asleep."

My love of the (bedtime) chat seems to have been genetically passed on to my children, who talk continuously without breaking for breath during the day and don't really slow down at night either. So I probably shouldn't have been surprised when they started sharing a room. 

It happened at first as a special "sibling sleepover" treat one weekend when I was out of town. Junius moved up to his top bunk, while Pippi assembled her own pillows, blankets and friends on his bottom bunk. They had fun pretending to camp together, and my husband had an easier time putting them to bed when he didn't have to bounce back and forth between their two rooms. 

That was two months ago.

Any day now, I keep thinking she'll want to go back to her double bed and all her own space. Or that he'll get tired of her stuff in his room and kick her down the hall. Instead, the only change they've made is to trade bunks.

They even asked if we could turn her room into a play space instead of a bedroom. I said no, knowing that three minutes after I finish, I'll have to turn it right back. 

But it doesn't matter how long it lasts, this bunk-sharing approach. All that matters is that I will always know -- and hopefully they will remember -- that it ever was. That there once was a time when they shushed each other to sleep because they loved each other enough to tolerate the one sneezing and humming while the other tosses and rattles the beds in exchange for being together just a little bit longer. 

Loss

My nephew Andrew died last week.

That's not a sentence I ever expected to write.

When I was maybe 13, a boy whose family went to my church was killed in a freak bicycle accident. I think we was probably 10 years old or so. And I remember my father being so sad, even though we didn't know the boy very well.

At the time, I didn't fully appreciate what my dad told me: "When you're an adult, you expect that at some point your parents will die. And you know that there's a chance your spouse will pass before you do. But you never, ever expect to have to bury your child."

Andrew was 22 years old and in graduate school studying entomology -- an adult by most standards, but still his parents' child. My mind will not allow me to comprehend the heartbreak that is bringing them to their knees.

He was 9 years old when I married his uncle and became his aunt. We always lived in different states, so we mostly saw each other at weddings and biennial Thanksgivings. I'm sorry to say I didn't know him well.

But the news of his death -- so sudden, so unbelievable -- seems impossible to process. As a parent, I now understand what my father meant all those years ago. When any parent loses a child, all parents join in their grief.

So I've been reading the tiny, beautiful, honest and sometimes funny eulogies left by his friends on his Facebook page, getting to know bits and pieces of a life well-lived. I've been saying steady prayers for Andrew's parents, brother and grandparents, along with the rest of the family. And I've been squeezing my own children a little tighter, a little longer to remind myself of what a gift I have in them.

I think my sister-in-law, another of Andrew's aunts, probably said it best, so I'll leave you with her words shared on his page:

"Andrew touched the lives of so many people through his love, friendship, words and actions. You, in turn, have helped make the world a better place because of his influence on you. At the risk of sounding corny, go and do a good deed for someone. Take a hike or walk outside. Look at the roly polys and the ants. If you're so inclined, share a beer with a friend. Life is too short. Let someone know that they have made a difference in your life."

Amen.

Road Trips

My family didn’t take many big trips when I was a kid. We spent most summer vacations at North or South Carolina beaches or visiting my grandparents in Virginia.

On the occasion that we went somewhere more exotic -- like Washington, D.C., or New York --  we always drove and we always checked out any colleges that were nearby. But a college visit with my dad didn’t usually involve an official tour or a trip into the admissions office. Instead, we mostly just drove through campus and saw whatever we could see from the car, then we kept going.

These little side trips became known as The Dave Drive-By.

Then the summer after my freshman year in college, my parents, brother and I took our first big family trip on an airplane – we flew to San Francisco, where we rented a big white Lincoln Town Car. I think the trunk on that thing was bigger than my first dorm room. Two weeks -- and four states, three national parks (four if you count Las Vegas), more than a dozen friends and relatives, and at least three colleges/universities -- later, we flew home from Phoenix.

That trip went down in family history as the Official Drive-By of The West. It was kind of a strange trip – I was 19 and used to living away from home, my brother was 15 and probably used to having me away from home. All four of us shared hotel rooms (when we weren’t staying with friends or family) and did pretty much everything together for the whole two weeks. I think back on it and wonder if my parents were crazy or clueless or both.

But I also can’t stop myself from grinning any time I think about that trip. My brother and I cracked endless jokes about the distance between the front seat and the back seat of the land yacht. We met relatives who last remembered seeing us when my brother was in diapers. My all ventured a little out of our comfort zones, saw places that were completely different than anywhere we’d ever been. We listened to a lot of Toad the Wet Sprocket.

More than 20 years later, that trip stands out as a mile-marker in my family history.

So far this year, my husband and I have taken our kids on our own version of The Drive-By in two opposite directions. In January, we drove to Pittsburgh (because who doesn't want to go to Pittsburgh in January?!) to see friends, tour the science center, ride the gondola, drive by the house my parents lived in when I was born, visit the Cathedral of Learning at Pitt, go ice skating outside and see the Penguins play hockey. In February, we drove to Disney World for the first time -- a more traditional kind of kid trip that still had that Drive-By feel as we whizzed through three parks in three days.

I wonder if my kids will remember 2014 as the Year of the Road Trip. Actually, I wonder if they will even remember 2014 at all. I’m pretty sure we were crazy for driving nearly nine hours to Pittsburgh, spending two days there and driving what turned into more than 11 hours back through a snow storm.  Pulling them out of school for two days to drive to Florida and back doesn't exactly seem logical either.

Even still, I find myself wondering how our kids will remember these trips and how their memories will be different from mine. Will Pippi recall the long, boring drive, or only the fact that she got to swim in the hotel pool and order room service for dinner? Will Junius wish we'd flown to Florida, or just laugh when he thinks back to shouting "THAT WAS AWESOME" on his first roller coaster?

And will either of them ever know how lucky they really are? Guess we'll keep planning Drive-Bys to remind them.

Sharing My Collection

I am a collector -- not in any official way, but more in my approach to the world. I collect family photos, my children's drawings and baby clothes, posters and tchotchkes from traveling, lots of books, letters from friends. I even collect actual friends.

Being a collector is part of why I write this blog. I like to collect ideas, stories, memories to share and revisit.

Letting go is not my strong suit.

When each of my grandparents passed away, I inherited pieces of furniture from their homes. Over time, I accumulated scores of items large and small between things I received directly from them and things I scavenged from my parents' attic.

Some of the furniture I took was purely functional. But many of the items hold personal significance. There's the picnic table that my grandfather built out of the hatch cover from an old ship -- he taught me to pick crabs at that table when I was a kid. It weighs a ton, but makes a quirky rough dining room table under the crystal chandelier from my in-laws. Or there's the antique sofa that my grandmother saved specifically for me, her only grand-daughter -- we recovered it in red corduroy to make it less fancy, but the curved feet at the bottom still set a grand tone.

But after years of taking in these hand-me-down treasures, our decor sometimes looks like we did all our shopping in the Dead Relatives Collection -- and there's only so much space for keeping furniture in our house.

So when we started talking about decorating Pippi's big girl room, I realized there were two pieces I was going to have to let go. One was a white dresser with glass knobs that had been in my room and my brother's room when we were kids and then in both nurseries when my children were babies. The other was an upholstered rocking chair that had belonged to my grandmother before serving as my reading chair in my teens and 20s and then my nursing chair in my 30s.

I considered selling them on Ebay or Craig's List, but never seemed ready to make the leap to post them online. Too much hassle. I thought about taking them to an antique store or consignment shop, but just couldn't bring myself to do it. No one else would think the furniture was as valuable as I did. How do you put a price on something filled with memories of multiple childhoods? It sounds melodramatic, but how could I haggle over the space where I rocked my children to sleep?

And then I found the Green Chair Project, a nonprofit organization co-founded by Jackie Craig and Beth Smoot in April 2010 to take quality donations from people like me (who have too much furniture but have a hard time letting go) and get them to people in transition (who actually need the items). The Green Chair makes the furnishings available for a nominal fee to individuals and families identified and referred by its partner agencies.

What makes The Green Chair different is that their warehouse is actually staged and decorated. It's not a pile of castaway junk that no one wanted, left behind for others to dig through. Instead, visiting The Green Chair is like wandering through any other furniture store or consignment boutique, allowing the recipients to shop with dignity as they furnish their home and create nurturing environments for themselves and their families.

I don't know who has my dresser and rocking chair now. But I like to imagine that somewhere there's a mom making a new life for herself and her baby, tucking away tiny onesies or snuggling together to nurse before bedtime. Or maybe it's a little girl who loves books as much as I do, happy for her own space to curl up and disappear into a story.

Letting go wasn't easy -- but somehow giving away the furniture instead of selling it seemed like the best way to honor the memories that have no price tag. Letting go created a new opportunity to be part of someone's next chapter. Letting go opened up space in both my house and my heart.

And I still get to collect the memories.

Eye of the Beholder

Throughout my life, my mom has always told me that I'm pretty. That's a great thing for a girl's ego -- except that often my mother does it in the context of disparaging herself at the same time.

"I wish my hair were shiny and beautiful like yours -- mine is so gray and flat now."

"You have such a nice figure -- I can't wear dresses like that anymore."

"Your teeth are so straight and white -- I've always hated my teeth."

The truth is that my mom is pretty -- and I look a lot like her, so it must be true. She's also 28 years older than I am, so I have a bit of an advantage.

Her habit of putting herself down while simultaneously lifting me up always makes me self-conscious. It's not a competition, I want to tell her. We are always our own worst critics (see the latest from Dove's "Real Beauty" campaign for more on that one). We're both getting older and changing, but I like to believe that neither one of us looks our age.

Then I look at Pippi. And suddenly I see what my mom sees when she looks at me. She's perfect and gorgeous and way more amazing than I am -- but unlike me, she has always looked more like her dad than her mom.

Until today.

This afternoon, Pippi and I went to our favorite salon so that she could get a summer haircut and donate her beautiful, shiny, sun-streaked ponytail to Pantene Beautiful Lengths. As Stephanie snipped and trimmed a sassy little bob and Pippi winked and grinned at herself in the mirror, I watched my long-haired daughter start to look just a little like me for the first time.

Looking at her wearing my haircut -- and grinning from ear to ear -- made my heart melt just a little. When I texted pictures to my husband so he could see the new do, he texted back, "Beautiful! She looks like you now ;)" -- and that made me melt just a little bit more.

It's a funny thing about motherhood, how each stage makes me understand something about my own mother. I'm starting to get it, what she sees when she looks at me. When I look at Pippi, I know she's prettier than I am -- the difference is that she's already got such a big head (literally and figuratively), that I'll be keeping that opinion to myself.

Click here to see the 1977 photo of my mom and me in our matching (Dorothy Hamill) haircuts, along with photos of Pippi's first haircut.

Marital Threats and How You Can Help

Somehow, I just can't believe that 76-year-old Lennie and 87-year-old Pearl are a threat to my "traditional" marriage.

And yet, conservative politicians, religious leaders and other groups keep trying to convince me that allowing homosexuals to get married threatens the very foundations of the institution of marriage.

Yeah, right.

I'm here to tell you that what threatens my marriage is not the notion that my across-the-street neighbor might one day want to marry his adorable boyfriend, or that my friend a few streets over is planning to have a baby with her girlfriend. And I definitely do not see a clear and present danger in two septuagenarian/octogenarian women who have loved each other faithfully for 45 years while making great contributions to their community and generally being nice people.

If you really must know, here are a few things that are an actual threat to the health of my one-man-one-woman, walked-down-the-aisle, have-a-license-to-prove-it marriage:

1. My children get up absurdly early. Every. Single. Day. My son is up AND DRESSED no later than 6 a.m. Even on Saturdays -- okay, he's still in his pajamas on the weekend, but he's up nonetheless. My daughter, convinced she might miss out on something fun, is up with him at the same time. And they expect to be entertained. Otherwise they start whining and annoying each other.
2. My husband has his own opinions and ideas. I mean, I thought he was just going to agree with me. Who knew he'd have his own vision about decorating the house, planning vacations or scheduling our weekends. Now we have to work together and compromise to get things done -- this means disagreeing sometimes, even arguing or fighting occasionally. After 10 years, there are no deal breakers, but it still takes work.
3. Babysitters can be expensive. In order for us to spend time together without our kids to nurture our relationship, we have to hire a babysitter. Then we have to go somewhere, which means spending more money. Without even doing anything fancy, we can easily spend $100 on a evening out. It might actually be cheaper to go to a marriage counselor who offered childcare in the waiting room than to plan a date night.
4. Social media is a time suck. After the kids go to bed, when we should probably be engaged in quality conversation together, we both tumble down the rabbit hole of Twitter, blogging, Words with Friends, Angry Birds, Pinterest, Gentlemint and a hundred other online traps. Not that there's anything wrong with reading blogs (ahem), but it does keep our focus off of each other.
5. Downton Abbey and Mad Men are too good. Again with the night-time distractions. But seriously -- how can we focus on each other when there's Lady Mary and Don Draper to worry about? Plus there's Modern Family and 30 Rock when we need a laugh, or Psych and White Collar when we want some investigating, or Portlandia when it's time for something random and hilarious. That TiVo box is seriously hazardous to our marital health.
6. The house is not self-cleaning. Even if we manage to turn off the TV and other electronics, there's still the laundry to fold, the dishes to wash, the grass to mow, the bathrooms to clean, the dinner to cook, the lunches to make, the bills to pay, the groceries to buy, the appointments to schedule. It would take six adults running this house in order to free up enough time for us to really stop and just be with each other. Again, Downton Abbey seems like a good idea.

So if you're really serious about wanting to protect North Carolina families and preserve healthy marriages across the state, you have a few options:

a. You can volunteer to babysit my children for the weekend free of charge.
b. You can donate time or money to an organization like Protect NC Families, the Equality NC Foundation, Race to the Ballot or We Are NC -- or attend the Love Wins dance this weekend in Durham.
c. You can make sure you're registered to vote NO on May 8.
d. All of the above.

Just let me know when you're ready to schedule that babysitting weekend.

Love Letters

My dad still uses the mail. You know, the write with a pen on paper U.S. postal service lick the envelope stick on a stamp drop it in the box kind of mail.

It's one of the many things I love about him.

I started getting letters from him when I went away to college -- that was pre-email (ahem) and pre-free-long-distance-on-my-cell-phone (cough) days, so mail was a primary communications tool with my family. But even now, when he's got email, cable phone and texting at his fingertips, I still get the occasional envelope in the mail box from my dad.

More often that not, the envelope contains an odd assortment of newspaper and magazine clippings. Occasionally, one of them is a wedding announcement for someone I knew in high school, although those have become less frequent as I've gotten older. Sometimes it's just something quirky that caught his attention. Or it's something relevant to a part of my life or recent conversation we've had.

The recent pile you see here includes a photo feature about fathers and daughters, an op-ed about Mitt Romney, an op-ed about Art Pope and The New Yorker and a spotlight on a local restaurant owned by my college roommate's family. Always a hodge-podge.

The articles are generally interesting or at least a little trip down memory lane. But what really makes me smile when I get a collection in the mail is knowing that on any given ordinary day, while he's sitting at the table reading the paper and eating his morning bowl of cereal, my dad is thinking about me.

Beach 5: Simple Gifts

Re-entry is a bitch.

After washingdryingputtingaway five loads of laundry, unloading the dishwasher, unpacking most of four suitcases and countless bags, clearing the answering machine and sifting through a week's worth of junk mail, we're all back to work and school again. But having just spent a blissful six-and-a-half days at the beach, I guess I really shouldn't complain.

In order to pretend that I'm still at the beach, each of this week's posts will include a "Beach 5" list. I figure I didn't post at all last week, so hopefully you can tolerate three posts this week. So here goes...

Being able to enjoy that annual week at the beach with my little family of four is a gift -- possibly one of the greatest gifts of the year. And as if that weren't enough on its own, I count the following among the additional gifts I received last week:

1. Beautiful weather: Hurricane Irene threatened to ruin everything, but ultimately made landfall north and east of our beach. As it turned out, we had perfectly sunny skies for seven straight days and no significant damage left behind. Not sure if we were blessed or lucky or both, but I'll take it.

2. Family photos: This year I took 734 pictures over the course of our beach week (although some of those were Pippi running off with the camera). That's not counting all the photos of us taken by friends or the pictures my husband took on his phone. It sounds excessive, but I love having the time to capture my children (and my husband) in their element. And this year a talented new friend with a fancy camera took some extra photos of us that are just beautiful.

3. Date night: Another friend at the beach voluntarily came over to our house after the kids went to bed so that my husband and I could have a date night. As in, just the two of us on our own all by ourselves at our favorite beach restaurant after dark. As in, hasn't happened in more than six years. What a treat!

4. Play time: Our kids are never happier than when they're at the beach. They get to be free all day, eat fruit snacks and chips non-stop, drink juice boxes until they pee in the ocean, get sandy dirty, run wild with their friends -- and no one tells them to "be quiet sit still don't touch that wipe your face" for most of an entire week. Plus we're the beneficiaries of great friends who have a combined eight children for them to run around with -- and parents who do cool things like fishing, egg tosses, corn hole, beach yoga and sea life pools. It's kid heaven.

5. Time with friends: In you case you hadn't noticed the theme, a big part of what makes our beach week so special is the families who have joined us for six years now. We met by accident, but have remained friends by very conscious choice (and careful planning) -- their friendship is truly a gift. In addition to the fact that they and their children help entertain our children (which is blessing enough), they are kind, funny, intelligent, curious, interesting people who will talk and read and laugh and make mai tais and just plain sit on the beach until dark.

Thank you for these simple, wonderful gifts. Only 354 days until we'll be together again in the sand.


Beach 5 posts:
- Tips for Parents
- Things I Should Have Packed
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A Family Tree in Google's Branches

Yesterday I met my forty-eleventh cousin.

That's not technically accurate, but that's what my grandmother would have called him. 

Actually, his great-grandfather and my great-great-grandmother were brother and sister -- which makes us third cousins once removed. Trust me on this one.

I found him online. No, not like that. Even weirder, actually. 

A few years ago, I was googling myself (that still sounds dirty, doesn't it?) to find some online articles I wrote in grad school. One of the links that showed up took me to someone's online family tree -- and I was in it. Along with my parents and grandparents, my brother, my husband and my son. But I had no idea who the guy was that posted the tree. Freaky, huh?

Long story short, I emailed him, discovered that my great-great-great-grandfather was his great-great grandfather -- and given that that makes us very distantly related in the present day, we'd never met or really even heard of each other. Except that he'd done all this genealogy research and pieced together an extensive family tree that he posted online.

And through the magic of social media, we became Facebook friends and began keeping up with each other's families. Then yesterday he came by with his wife and youngest daughter (after calling ahead, of course) while they were in town visiting friends. They turned out to be lovely people (not that I should be surprised -- they are related to me, after all) and we had a really nice visit.

It's a funny thing to think about, but we're all related to loads of people out there who we've never met -- and most of them, we never will. I'm sure there's a lesson in there about being nice to strangers and treating everyone like your brother. But then again, maybe we're nicer to strangers sometimes than we are to our own family.

So instead of looking for some great moral in all of this, you might want to stick with the high entertainment factor of finding yourself online. Go ahead and google yourself. You never know where you might turn up.

In Case the Birthers Ask

Given that everyone is all hot about the President's birth certificate these days (really? like there's nothing else we need to be talking about?), I feel I must make a confession.

I am not a Tar Heel born.

There, I said it. It hurts a little, but it's true.

I am still a Tar Heel bred. And when I die, I'm a Tar Heel dead. But when I was born, my parents were living in (...wait for it...)

...Pittsburgh.

Gasp! Shocking, I know.

My dad took a job with U.S. Steel after he graduated college, so my parents were living in Pittsburgh, PA, when their first bundle of joy arrived. Because I was only nine months old when they packed up and moved us to North Carolina, I've always considered myself a life-long Southerner.

But if you asked me to prove my NC pedigree, I'd have to show you something other than my birth certificate. Things like... eating barbecue and Krispy Kremes, loving sweet potatoes (the state vegetable!), saying "y'all" regularly, having two degrees from Carolina, drinking sweet tea and Cheerwine, knowing how to shag (the dance, people -- get your British minds out of the gutter).

You think if I go to a NASCAR race, that would be enough to silence any birther questions?
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Cry, Cry, Cry

When I was a kid, sometimes I'd get weepy for no apparent reason.

I'd pad quietly through the house, looking for my mom. Often she'd be sitting at the piano, so I'd climb up on the bench beside her.

"I feel like crying and I don't know why," I'd tell her.

And she'd always tell me that was fine. That it was okay to cry, to let it out, even if there wasn't an explanation or an answer to go with the tears. Then she'd listen to me let go, holding me just a little so that I knew I wasn't alone.

That's how I feel today. Like crying, but I don't know why.

Maybe it's because my children were apparently conspiring to kill me between 4 and 9 a.m. today while my husband was away overnight. Because every time I turn around, Pippi is naked -- even after I've dressed her and am waiting at the door to leave for the morning. Because neither one of them will ever. stop. talking.

Maybe it's because I seem to be physically incapable of going to bed before 11 p.m., no matter how exhausted I am. Because my sinuses are clogged with pollen-induced snot. Because my right wrist and hand ache so much I can't hold a pen properly.

Maybe it's because there's yet another hole in my kitchen ceiling. Because I had to grocery shop with Pippi today. Because it's gray and cloudy.

Or d) all of the above.

Thanks for listening.
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Spring Fling

We all have our own signs of spring that we watch for -- warm breezes, trees in bloom, daffodils opening, violent allergic reactions to every little thing in the air.

This weekend, while temps were approaching 80 degrees in Raleigh (good-bye February!), I added a new favorite sign of spring to my list: The first Sunday of the year driving with the top down and all four of us in the car, the fresh scent of biscuits drifting up from our to-go bag, with everyone singing "Molly the Moose" at the top of our lungs.

Everybody wants
...to feel the grass between their toes
...to feel the sunshine on their nose
...to taste the rain, to sniff the breeze
...to live their life the way they please
Everybody wants to be free

A perfect Sunday for the Convertible Family -- and a perfect way to welcome spring!

Note: I couldn't find an audio clip to link to that actually plays this part of the song, but you can order the CD here. And you really should, because it's awesome.

photo credit to antaean
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For My Brother

When my brother and I were little, we were fast playmates -- until we started fighting, of course, but we always made up eventually. Legos, house, Star Wars, school, Battleship, cops-and-robbers, kick ball, we played it all.

Part of what I love about having two kids is watching them play together and remembering those fun times from my own childhood.

Now that my brother and I are (allegedly) grown-ups, we've found ourselves on very different paths. I did the more-or-less traditional college-job-grad school-marriage-job-babies route. My brother? Not so much.

Only four years apart in age, but light years apart in other ways -- and yet we're still those same two playmates at heart, still able to make each other laugh.

This week my younger (but now much taller) brother is starting out on a new path.

It's his story to tell, not mine -- so we'll leave it at that.

But I thought that with all the collective strength and positive energy (and prayers, if you say them) out there in the bloggy world, that maybe we could send him off with a powerful force of hope and light to guide his way.

He's picked a much harder path than I did. But I'm trusting that his road-less-traveled strategy will pay off in the long run.
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Travel Tips: To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

Today's post is part of the inaugural Blogging Friends Road-Weary Traveling Tips Compendium, founded by Evelyn at Momsicle. If you're traveling for the holidays this week (or even if you're not), you'll want to check out the other bloggers linked below who are offering great tips today.

We're fortunate to live in the same state with our parents -- close enough for a day trip now and then. But we still find ourselves needing to spend the night away from home, either visiting friends and family or taking a vacation. And the hardest part for us has consistently been sleep.

We moved Junius to a big boy bed when he was two, so he's been the easy one. And when Pippi was a baby, she survived in the pack-and-play okay for a while.

Then we took her to stay with friends in Charlotte.

She had just turned two years old -- still sleeping happily in her crib at home, but probably too big for the pack-n-play we parked at the foot of our bed. She tossed, turned and sobbed all night. "I go home. Seep my crib," she wailed. It was so pitiful. She was miserable, we were miserable, no one slept. We left after lunch the next day to avoid another disastrous night.

For months after, we simply didn't travel overnight. But then there were vacations and other trips we couldn't pass on. And thus began our trial-and-error approach to solving the Pippi problem.

Here's what I've learned about sleeping away with a toddler who's too big for a pack-n-play and not yet ready for a bed:

1. The very cute toddler-sized air mattress with built-in princess pink sleeping bag was not the answer. She loved it when I pulled it out of the box, wouldn't get off of it when we inflated it in, snuggled right into the sleeping bag when we zipped her up. And then she was done with it. Took forever to get her to sleep, then we found her like this (photo above) an hour later. She's sound asleep in that picture -- on the floor, with her head on the mattress. We slid her back into the sleeping bag, but she was awake and in our bed an hour after that.
2. Putting her in the trundle bed at her grandparents' house next to her brother was not the answer. They talked and giggled and wouldn't go to sleep. They switched beds back and forth. And in the middle of the night, when we thought they were finally sleeping, she hopped up, ran into the living room and retrieved a pile of toys to take back to her bed. She ended up in bed with me and her daddy slept on the trundle with Junius that night.
3. Same scene, different day at the other grandparents' house when we tried putting her in the twin bed (with rails on both sides) beside her brother.
4. Tucking her into the queen- or king-sized bed with us meant she eventually slept -- but we didn't. She rolls around, throws elbows and kicks in her sleep. Oh, and she wakes up at the crack of dawn, ready to play.
5. And finally, the solution. If she sleeps fine at home in her crib, then get a crib. Duh. On a weekend trip to Virginia Beach, we asked the hotel to set up a crib in our room. Worked like magic. She slept so well, we didn't even mind when she woke up smiling with the sun at the foot of our bed and sang out, "Hi Daddy!" Later in the summer, we stayed with a friend who still had a crib in storage -- magic again. And on our end-of-summer beach week, we rented a crib from one of those places that rents beach chairs and umbrellas. Ta-da! Even at naptime, it worked like a charm. 

I realize we'll have to move her to a bed at some point -- but I've decided not to sweat it until she turns three. And Thursday night, she'll be in another hotel crib, hopefully sleeping soundly after a wild day of playing with the cousins and eating too much dessert.

Now, CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE for where to go next:

• Evelyn at Momsicle, who embraced the red-eye and mood-altering substances
• Sue at Motherhood and Me, who won't let a little in-flight poop get in the way of traveling all over the country to see her family
• Kim at Let Me Start By Saying, who believes that with the right packing list, a little compromise and some red wine, you can successfully travel with two kids
• Sandhya at Literary Safari, who tackled international travel with a baby and lived to tell about it
• And more later this week from Lauren at Fizgiggery

If you want to join in the fun, leave your tips in the comments here or write your own travel tips post and leave the link in the comments.

Naming Conventions

When my husband and I went to the county courthouse to get our marriage license before our wedding, we asked the woman there if we would be able to use the license to change our names at the social security office.

"Sure, honey," she looked at me. "You just take this with you and they'll change your name for you."

"Right," I replied. "And for him, too?"

She looked at me like I'd just sprouted a second head. After going around that same exchange again, she finally sighed and said, "If he's going to change his name, too, he'll need a lawyer."

Weeks later, we took our forms and our marriage license into the social security office, bracing for more crazy looks when we explained that we were taking each other's name and making a double surname for our family.

"These forms are correct?" the social security clerk asked, barely looking up from his desk.

"Yes," we replied.

"Do you want a hyphen in there?"

"No." (My husband felt like we had enough punctuation already with the apostrophe from his last name, and who was I to argue with a man who volunteered to take my name along with his own?)

"Okay. You'll get your new cards in the mail." And that was that.

Now, nine years and two kids later, we all have four names -- and I love it and hate it at the same time. It means the world to me that my husband was willing to change his name, too, without being asked. And it was important to me to keep all of my names while also taking his. We weren't following anyone's tradition, but we did what felt right and symbolic to us.

The downsides are that monograms are really tricky and no one understands what our last name is. Sometimes I don't mind when people skip over my contribution to the double name, but I never know where we'll be alphabetized at will-call or the pharmacy. It's also a lot to put on a kindergartner just learning how to write his first name, only to discover that he has three more to figure out.

I thought of all this on Sunday while reading the wedding announcements (oh, come on, like you never read them). There were only two weddings listed, but both involved grooms with double surnames. For both marriages, it looked like the husband planned to keep his double surname as is, but each bride had a different solution to her married name.

In one case, the bride simply took the groom's hyphenated surname. In the other, the bride created a new hyphenated surname with her maiden name followed by the groom's second surname. That made me wonder what they've discussed doing for kids' names. And did the groom's mother feel slighted that her daughter-in-law didn't take her part of the surname?

Regardless, it's nice to see people finding their own ways through and around the married name conundrum. And if either one of my four-named children ends up marrying another four-named person, I'm promising now to stay out of the way and let them figure it out for themselves -- as long as it's something they decide together.
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A Mudcats Comedy of Errors

This past Sunday, we planned a family outing to see a minor league baseball game -- sounds like the perfect summer evening, right? I mean, what could possibly go wrong at a Mudcats game?

Well, where do I start?

Maybe with the rain, that ruined the first game we tried to see three weeks ago. After driving through a few light showers on our way out to Five County Stadium (Groupon in hand, of course), we discovered that the afternoon game was cancelled.

But as annoying as that trip was, it was only the beginning of our Mudcats mishaps. Here's a snapshot of all the things that went wrong when we tried again this past Sunday night:

• There was the parking attendant who tried to keep our change for the parking pass.
• Then we got the second parking attendant who told us we'd parked badly (even though we'd done just fine).
• And in case that wasn't enough, we met the third parking attendant (sent to track us down by the second parking attendant) who took my husband back to the car and made him move it back 18 inches.
• Once inside, the people sitting in our reserved seats furnished tickets with the exact same seat numbers on them, although he cleverly held his finger over the date on the tickets. Then my sweet husband went down to the box office, asked for four new tickets and declined to have the other people thrown out -- sadly the seats weren't as good and it took us a walk around the entire park to find them.
• They only sell hot dogs at certain concession areas, not all. Which seems ridiculous, since I go to baseball games specifically for hot dogs (not pizza or chicken sandwiches). After waiting in a very long line (made even longer because they didn't seem prepared to actually serve any hot dogs at the end of the 2nd inning) and handing over every single dollar in our pockets (because they only took cash and over-charged for every item), the hot dogs tasted more microwave than grill. Average at best and very disappointing.
• Did I mention that the rather active smoking area was parked beside the food line we were standing in? 
• After walking around the entire park, arms filled with food, drinks and children, we finally arrived at our new seats. Which were filled. Again. Thankfully there was an usher there this time to shoo the offenders back into their own seats. Which they were quite annoyed about.
• As we filed into our row near 3rd base, exhausted by the effort, we looked down to see the floor littered with peanuts and peanut shells crunching under the feet of our peanut-allergic son.

At this point, I looked at my husband with a desperate attempt at a smile and said, "I'm telling you now. If I get hit with a foul ball, it's over. We will be on national television, and I better get paid well for my 15 minutes of fame."

Thankfully, we left without further incident at the 7th inning stretch and made it safely home in time to tuck the kids in bed and fall out on the couch.

In defense of the Mudcats operation, everyone on staff inside the park was very courteous and helpful. But sadly it wasn't enough to make me want to go back any time soon. Guess it's just as well that the season is over -- gives me time to recover before spring training.

Parents Are People, Too

One of the fascinating things about becoming a parent has been the new perspective on my own parents. Sometimes it's a different view about the decisions they made about me -- now I totally understand why they wouldn't let me go unchaperoned to the beach in high school despite my pleas at the time about how very responsible I was. Sometimes it's a fresh appreciation for how hard they worked to make my life easy or realizing why they didn't always have the answers. Sometimes it's simply realizing how young they were and that they were people in addition to being my parents.

A similar revelation occurred recently when I emailed my dad about how much I enjoyed reading a book he'd loaned me -- Water for Elephants (which you should definitely read, if you haven't already). My dad is in a book club and I'm a former English teacher, so we have a lot of fun sharing books with each other. Unfortunately for me, my life doesn't allow me to read much these days (other than Fancy Nancy, of course) -- but I'm trying to get better about that and this book was part of that effort.

My dad emailed back about the three books he'd finished that week, followed by this comment: "I know how you enjoy reading and think about you and the time I have to do that."

And suddenly it hit me. Today, my dad has more books than he has shelves and reads multiple books each month -- but I have absolutely no memories of him reading for pleasure when I was a kid. Because (duh), he was busy working, spending time with his spouse and children, and trying to maintain a home for all of us (and squeezing in some tennis time, too). But as a kid, it never occurred to me that my dad was giving up something he enjoyed in order to do all of that.

I love that my dad has that time to read, now that he's retired -- he's earned it. And I REALLY look forward to the day when every day is Saturday for me, too, so that I can start reading a book a week without having to ignore my husband and children.

Like Mother, Like Daughter

Back in the day, my mom and I had nearly matching haircuts. Dorothy Hamill-style, natch -- I mean, it was the 70s. This was us (plus my brother, who did not have the matching haircut, much to his relief).

As I got older, I grew my hair out long, then cut it short, then long-ish, then very short, then long again, then perms (ah, the 80s), then short-ish again, then very long and finally landed in some version of my current 'do after college. Around these parts, I believe the technical term for my style is "the Raleigh bob," although I like to think my cut has a little more sass than that.

I tell you all of this as a set-up for what Pippi did for the first time yesterday.

She went from this...

...to this (notice the lollipop we had to use to bribe her into the chair)...

...to this...

...which, if you look at my profile picture on the right,
is pretty much the same haircut I have now. 

And motherhood comes full circle once again. Although I don't recall my mom teaching me to say, "Pippi has a sassy haircut!" when I was a girl.

Recipe: Mediterranean Chickpea Salad

Given that I'm clearly not going to get rich writing this blog, I mostly do it because it's something I enjoy -- a way to clear my head, chronicle parts of my life and hopefully entertain some friends (and a few strangers) along the way. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't absolutely adore getting comments on my blog -- I realize that may sound a little pitiful and needy, but I know I'm not alone.

So today's recipe is dedicated to one of my favorite new readers/commenters -- he not only made one of the recipes I posted, he also CAME BACK to the post and left a review. And it cracks me up a little to explain that (bear with me now) he's my cousin's wife's cousin's husband. So we're, like, totally not really related.

Anyway, here's a new twist on an old favorite that my husband and I used to make when we were newlyweds. I stole this recipe from The New York Times, but have added notes below about how I actually prepared it. Great for lunch or dinner in the summertime, and keeps well in the fridge for at least a few days. Rob -- let us know if your family likes it!

Mediterranean Chickpea Salad

Ingredients:

• 2 (15-ounce) cans chick peas, drained and rinsed
• 1/4 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley, or a combination of parsley and other herbs, such as chives, tarragon, marjoram, basil, or mint (I used dried tarragon, basil and crazy salt, all of which happened to be in my spice drawer)
• 1 small red bell pepper, chopped (I didn't have one, so I skipped it -- but would probably taste good)
• 2 medium tomatoes, diced (I used a bunch of grape tomatoes, halved)
• 4 scallions, white and light green parts only, sliced (optional -- I didn't have any, so I skipped it)
• 6 kalamata olives, pitted and quartered lengthwise (I used about 2/3 of a can of medium black olives, halved)
• 1 ounce feta cheese, crumbled (I probably used a generous ounce -- love love love the feta)

To make the dressing:

• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice (I never have lemons in the fridge, so I used the bottled stuff)
• 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar, champagne vinegar, or sherry vinegar (I used red)
• 1 small garlic clove, minced or put through a press
• 1/4 teaspoon cumin seeds, lightly toasted and crushed or coarsely ground (Not sure what the difference would be, but I just used the powdered cumin spice I had in the house)
• Salt and freshly ground pepper
• 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 2 tablespoons plain low-fat or nonfat yogurt (I used Greek yogurt)

Directions:

1. Toss together the salad ingredients. 
2. Whisk together the lemon juice, vinegar, garlic, cumin seeds, salt, pepper, olive oil and yogurt. 
3. Toss dressing with the chickpeas, etc.
4. I added chopped cucumber.

Notes: The salad can be assembled several hours before you wish to serve it. Keep in the refrigerator. Serves four as a main dish, six as a side.

Photo by Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

What's in a Shoe

My daughter loves these shoes. LOVES them. They were a gift from my mother-in-law at Christmas -- Nonna picked them out specifically because she thought the ankle straps would make them easier to wear. It might be a little hard to see, but in addition to the high heels and ankle straps, the shoes also have satin ruffles with rhinestones down the front.

I've resisted the urge to write this post because I didn't want to offend Nonna. Pippi LOVES the shoes -- and I would have, too, when I was her age. And to be honest, I'm probably just jealous that Pip can walk, run (yes, run) and climb stairs in them way better than I can in heels that actually fit me.

But every time I look at these shoes, all I can think is Do they come in a gift set with a pole and some nipple tassels? I mean, seriously, they look like stripper shoes.

I'm not even going to try to write about all the frighteningly sexy stuff marketed for toddlers -- that's well-traveled territory among mommy-bloggers. But I admit that my first reaction to the shoes had me all worked up about how inappropriate it is for a two-year-old to look like an exotic dancer -- a reaction that wasn't helped by Pippi's penchant for wearing the shoes and her diaper and nothing else.

Once I talked myself off the ledge, I remembered that Pippi doesn't have that context for the shoes -- all she sees is sparkly, pretty, pink fun. She gets to enjoy the shoes without worrying about what anyone else thinks, without any baggage or hidden meaning at all.

So Nonna, thanks for giving my baby girl some shoes to match her sassy personality. And thanks for reminding me that sometimes girls just want to have fun.