The Toddler Workout

Today as the kids were lying horizontally on the stairs kicking the wall rythmically with their bare feet, I overheard this conversation:

OLIVER: This is not a movie.  This is not a game.

MAGGIE:  This is exercise!

Which sounded to me exactly like a wonderful snippet of dialogue from an '80s movie about a renegade personal trainer played by Patrick Swayze.  

Seriously though.  If you do want to get in shape. I suggest you follow this regimen. Or you could just do "eggups."

In the form of. . .June Cleaver!

It's possible that I am well on my way to becoming a bitter old lady.  My cup has always been more empty than full. (I wish, I wish, I wish I were an eternal optimist.  Alas.) But lately a certain Scroogyness is becoming more apparent. I swear under my breath at people who don't use their blinkers, I pick fights with the Mister over how tightly he screws on the lids to our condiments, and I nearly had to restrain myself after reading this post by Girl's Gone Child on Babble.  Why someone else's maternal bliss should incite such ugly and unchecked anger in me, I'm not exactly sure.  

I think it's because I have struggled since the birth of my wonderful children to find the joy in motherhood that seems to come so naturally to others.  Oh, I love to sniff their hair and nibble their toes.  I am entranced by their cleverness and agog at their beauty.  But I am just as often trying my darnedest to get away from them, the little hellions. I often feel worn to a nub, disappointed in my mother-instinct, bored, exhausted, and snappish.  I wish I didn't.  I wish I found being a mother one long and constant journey down Bliss Boulevard.  I wish I had more patience and generosity and gentle mom-wisdom to impart. I wish I sometimes made macaroni and cheese from scratch.

And this doesn't help:

In the grocery story, 11 am.

OLIVER (within easy earshot of all the nice people in the produce section): Mommy, you need to buy some wine.

ME: Not today, sweetie.

OLIVER:  But Mommy, you really love wine.  You really like it a lot.

ME (voice pitched high): Oh, I do, do I?  Ha, ha. Well, we don't need any today.

OLIVER: But, mommy you love to drink wine.  You need to buy wine.

A thing I like

Hey!  Blogging is all in the family now.  The Mister just launched the new blog for Green Apple Books & Music called The Green Apple Core.  Check out his first post in which he artfully combines a poem (read by him) and some video (taken with his favorite new toy, the Flip).  Also, buy lots of books so we can send our kids to college.

Valentine making party

Our mess

When we were kids, my best friends, Sarah and Leah, and I used to get together with our mothers and their aunt Martha to make elaborate, Victorian, over-wrought Valentine's Day cards.  Someone—I think it was Sarah and Leah's late mom, Hannah—invented a technique for creating these big, stuffed fabric hearts that protruded like sentimental little pot bellies from the front of our construction paper and doily creations. 

The originals: Leah, Sarah, and Martha

We made dozens (collectively, hundreds) of them over the course of many years for many different people: boyfriends long gone, parents deceased, friends whose names we've since forgotten.  And here we still are, surrounded by rubber stamps and old magazines and bits of ribbon and scraps of fabric, making valentines.  This time with our own kids.  We don't do it every year, but yesterday we did it big.   Its kind of like our modern-suburban version of a sewing circle.  Or at least it's as close as I come to that sort of thing.

Maggie, grandma, and Georgia making valentines

A snippet from the party:

OLIVER (holding up yet another stale conversation heart): Mommy, can I eat this?

ME: No, honey, you've already had enough and that one has glue all over it.

OLIVER: No, I already licked it all off. 

Some of our handiwork.  Cute, huh?

A thing I like

This photo by Christian Chaize of a beach in Portugal.  I love the colors.  I love the composition.  I love the vibe.  You can buy a print at Jen Bekmans' 20x200 gallery here.  I would, but I'm still not buying anything.  So do it for me.  I can live vicariously.