today was a really great day, and there is no other explanation other than the fact that i went running BY MYSELF for 30 minutes this morning. i don't think i have done that in 4 years. of course, i have had time to myself, but not to run outside alone in the morning. i never knew how crucial that is.

anyway, despite the fact that it was a rainy gray day, we had a great time, and i never got anxious about all of the messes, etc. sometimes after 6 hours of being inside with crafts and toys and cooking and snacks i start to feel a little, well, tense. but today we had a great time with our crafts, and somehow i got the weekend cleaning done (how??? i have no idea. usually i feel like the house will never be clean).

and i imlemented one of the more brilliant ideas of motherhood that i have. when we were at the ups store, carter spotted the rolls of paper for adding machines and pointed to them. i looked and thought, hmmmm....lots o' fun for $1.50 each. today, when they were playing in their room, i set them out at their little table along with a box of markers and crayons, and when they emerged, you would have thought santa had visited. talk about a lot of fun. you can write on them, you can draw on them, they can be a bandage, they can be an accessory. you can pretend you are a rhythm gymnast, you can make up a scavenger hunt, and you can write secret messages. and when you are tired of all of that, you can make a nest.

what is really great is that they are so narrow and they pretty much force one to write in a line--something that ava does most of the time, but sometimes the words sort of fall all over the paper. this was a good way to impose some structure without her being aware.

we made applesauce --carter refused, ava gobbled.

carter said "stuck"-- as in "mama...deet deet...stuck" (mommy, my train is stuck).

we finally went out in the afternoon. first to the animal shelter. hooray! kitties! ooops. closed for a function. very very upset carter. tears, wailing..."meeeeeooooowwwwww! meeeeeeeeeeeooooooowwwww!!!!" lesson: do not promise kitties, ever. use as a surprise.

then to the toy store. lots and lots of fun there. no longer have to worry about carter tripping and falling on the stairs or raiding all of the shelves--he is content to just play. ava, not as engaged. then to the bookstore, then home.

ava and i did the 60 piece jigsaw puzzle that we purchased, and she was VERY proud of her accomplishment. carter liked his lacing beads. which also substituted as a sorting challenge.

so, between some of the life-skills lessons i have received lately regarding dealing with difficult situations that are complicated (that is deliberately opaque), and my morning run, things got pretty darn cheery around here.

that and i read an amazing article in a quaker magazine about parenting, and it just reiterated my deepest feelings about raising my children. please let me do 1/4 of the job the parents in the article did. it was inspiring to say the least.

so tonight, i told carter and ava that we were having hamburgers, a favorite for both of them. not for me, but whatever.

as we were driving home, we passed mcdonald's. both kids have had enough hamburgers there in the past few months to develop a serious adoration for those confections of pickles, grease and white bread. carter, thinking logically, sent up a howl of protest when we did not stop.

i said, oh no honey, we are having hamburgers at home.

carter said "nuh-uh!"

and then ava piped in:

"well, carter, mommy does not want us to have too many mcdonald's hamburgers--do you know why?"

carter shook his head

"well, the meat in the hamburgers has bad stuff in it because the farmers who raise the cows feed them yucky food and give them medicines that gets into their meat and then into us, and that is not good...that is why mommy likes organic meat..." etc.

not only did it stop carter in his tracks, it very nearly stopped me in my tracks.

apparently, she IS listening to me ramble...

deer season in the adirondacks has begun.

this is the only place i have ever lived where it is a matter of course to drive down the road and see men with rifles hiking along the shoulder of the road.

just imagine it--driving along, dooo deeee dooo...oh, look, a man with a high-powered gun with a scope and such just ambling along toward my car....

and believe me, it is not just ONE man. many many men. it is a very serious time of year here. no hiking for us. anything, even a bright red jogging stroller, looks like a deer 'round these parts...

lessons learned: tap shoes are NOT the smartest gift in the world for a 4-year-old.

to be sure, she loves them. loves them. asked to sleep in them. in that regard, they are a great gift. however, after 10 minutes of tapping tapping tapping tapping tapping, you have had enough. after 2 hours, you think you are going to lose it, and after 4 hours, you have. not only that, but they mark the floor. not good. and WOW do they hurt if accidentally clipped against your ankle. oh, and they are wickedly slippery on certain surfaces. but she does look cute in her long pink and blue tutu, pink cardgan, pink tights and tap shoes.

lady and the tramp has edged out mary poppins. both of them love the bloodhound.

carter is actually adding words at a furious pace. his current favorite is STOP! and CHOP! he said something today that was unmistakable, and surprising, but of course i canot remember it. but he still manages to convey complicated and abstract ideas--whenever we go to fish creek playground, he plays this game where he runs up the ramp of the play-scape, says "bea!" = "beast" , i say really! and he holds up one or two fingers. then he runs down the ramp, "kills" it and runs back up, and says "bea" in a way that cannot be written--basically he conveys that the beast is no more. and then suddenly there is another one! and he runs down. and runs up! and says "bea!" and holds up a finger, and i say "another one!" and he nods vehemently, and then runs back down and "kills" it again. he plays very intently with his animals, and his favorite thing is to help them go potty. or to feed them. today we were sitting together, and i wish i could remember exactly what we were discussing, but i said something very complicated and abstract to him, and he did it. i wish wish wish that i could remember it. but i was too distracted by the crazy dance he did with the 2 flyswatters almost immediately thereafter.

ava had her art supplies while i put him down, and when i came out, she had made a surgical mask out of pink construction paper. with a little help from me we got it tied on, and then she almost immediately pushed it up on her forehead. i got a green one, and when i put it on, i did the same thing. and promptly forgot about it. THANK GOD i saw it in my rear-view mirror before leaving for the playground. it was not an attractive headband. although i could have perhaps said i was considering jainism.

yes. still sick. apparently, carter got off easy with just a wicked temp for 48 hours. i have had the worst sore throat of my life for 5 days now. plus cough. ava now has a temperature. with a sore throat and a "splitting headache" -- ah. just like her mother. i predict that tomorrow will be a very tough day.

plus, she burned her hands on the woodburning stove a few days ago, and that is causing her a lot of pain. it was not technically a bad burn--nothing like carter's, but one of them did blister a bit, and the skin sloughed off today. she was not a happy camper. until today, the worst of the experience has been her utter mortification. she was warming up her hands, and in order to touch the stove, she would have had to breach the barrier of the protective screen--something she knows not to do--so, she had to lift her hands up and over and then lower them at least 9 inches to the top of the stove, clearly a deliberate act. i know her hands were cold, but i have a little theory that she also was wondering "what would happen if I touched this stove?" -- a little bit of curiosity about exactly how hot it was, a little bit of attention seeking, and a little bit of simply needing to learn a tough lesson on her own. add to that a hard time judging the distance between the backs of her hands (fortunately that was the part she brushed the stove with) and the top of the stove. think about it--hold your hand palm down over the table--you know where the table is--now turn your hand over and try to do the same thing. it is different. not as sensitive. so, all of that = one bad burn on the back of her right hand.

poor kid.

on an entirely different note, somethng i have to get down for posterity--she has watched cinderella a few times, but after seeing it once or twice, we were riding in the car and listening to something on the radio, and a waltz came on. she said "mom! this is just like cinderella!" -- i was literally flabbergasted. yes, the prince/cinderella scene is a waltz, and yes we were listening to a waltz, but totally different. somehow she knew. perhaps others are reading this and saying well, duh, but as someone that is totally not auditory, this is incomprehensible to me. i nearly drove off the road.

and then, i immediately thought--well, i am in for a challenge. because i don't learn with my auiditory system. not one itty bitty bit. it is, in fact, my biggest weakness. and therefore, teaching her will be a tad difficult. i am inclined to read and write in order to learn. if a teacher stands in front of a class, and i don't take notes, i will have no idea what was said. not to mention a severe weakness when it comes to music, movies, and poetry slams.

hopefully she is at least kinesthetic--then at least we can meet in the middle.

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! lead everywhere. everyone is testing, and lo and behold, lead is in everything. just go to the cpsc website and see.

it seems every decade there is a new safety crisis. 90s it was thimerosol. 00s it is lead.

i have something resembling the flu. carter's gift to me, i guess. he is fortunately fine. i am bedridden. medicine is not making a big difference.

speaking of, interesting that manufacturers are pulling cold meds for the 2 and under crowd. i never had to worry about their safety or efficacy, since both kids cannot handle anything other than tylenol, but it is an interesting development. vicks is probably thrilled.

ok. today was the 3rd day in a row that we left the house at some ridiculously early hour and did not return until late afternoon. phew. it makes for a very tired mama. anyway:

1. laurie berkner was great. we drove to albany in the am, made it on time (!!), and she performed all the songs that ava knew. ava was frozen in her seat for about 2 songs, then decided that yes, she did want to get up and dance with the other kids in the aisle. and that was it. she periodically returned to her seat, but preferred the kid-zone. carter enjoyed it, but had more fun going bumpity bump down teh giant staircases of the concert hall than anything else. both kids got lollipops upon our return to the car, which carter promptly decorated himself with. he fell asleep and for a moment we thought he might have sealed his lips shut with lollipop goo. he was fine. the last 45 minutes of the drive were a bit rough, but we made it. carter asked to go poopy at the country store, and when he got performance anxiety, he transferred the effort to the little potty in the back of the car. he thought that was fun--sitting on the potty in the way back with the hatch open, gazing at long lake. i am sure it was a funny sight from the street view too.

2. sunday we returned to the corn maze (after hitting the grocery store). we solved the puzzle in under 2 hours, had a BLAST with the minor exception of some idiot's choice to chuck an ear of corn over the maze--blindly. guess whose head it nearly hit? yes, carter's. guess who soundly chewed out a few local teens in an explosion of mama-bear fury and remarkable verbal acumen? given that i cannot usually get 2 words out without stumbling upon them, i was surprised at my ability to quickly humble these kids into recognition of their stupidity. if i had not been so upset i would have walked away rubbing my knuckles on my collarbone, but i was still shaking. we returned to having fun and searching for the exit. when we got out, the local 4-h happened to have set up pony rides. hello, universe? thank you from the bottom of my heart. the kids nearly fell over with joy. after that and some more truck and big digger play in the sawdust pile we went to skating (covered in mud and sawdust), then finally got home at 6:30.

3. today, it was a day-o-agriculture. first banker's orchards. no apple picking, all gone. tears brimming in one 4-year-old's eyes. but, they had a petting zoo, a pile of sand with trucks and diggers, some little old-fashioned rides, and doughnuts. all was ok again. then we went to rulf's orchards. yes, picking, red delicious only. great, where do we go? the woman at teh counter told me to go down the road and turn left at the jamaican trailer. i started to ask, then thought to myself: given that this is an orchard with apple trees and apple trees only, anything called a jamaican trailer must be very obvious. turns out, that is exactly what it was. a large trailer home for the workers from jamaica. i had a bazillion questions about the practice of hiring jamaican workers as well as the experience of being a jamaican worker, but kept my nose out of it other than to learn that some stay, some go home, and they all work to prune the trees in the winter. after that, we got 2 hot dogs at the little stand at the orchard and ate them in the gazebo. ava looked at hers for a long time. it was in a bun, something that she has not had yet. then she looked up at me and said "i am going to eat this differently today!" with the sort of excitement that only a 4-year-old can bring to a novel endeavor. carter simply reached into the bun, grabbed the hot dog, ketchup and all, flung the bun on the floor, and ate his like a banana. then carter had a brief nap in the car, and we went to the pumpkin patch. they fired up the tractor and hay wagon for just us, and off we went to the muddiest pumpkin patch ever. we found our pumpkins, and rode back. both kids thought the tractor was pretty neat. ava spent a long time watching the ground go under the wheels. she was leaning out over the edge, staring at the ground for nearly the entire ride. i watcher her and wondered what could she be thinking? remember staring out the car window? how absorbing that could be? something about the wagon wheels and the dirt was equally fascinating. we finally came home at 4, and i managed to cook a roast with potatoes, broccoli and mushrooms AND get the kids in bed on time. and moreover, i managed to do that with a broken oven! just call me mrs. cleaver.

oh, and also:

ava is afraid of the dark. suddenly. perhaps it has to do with the recent power outage, but she was FINE when that happened. i think it has more to do with the fact that it has been light out when she goes to bed for the longest time, and prior to that, it never occurred to her to think about the dark in any concrete way. now that the sun sets earlier and it is often dark when she is going to sleep, she is now pondering the darkness. and she is not too thrilled with it. but she will go up to the window and stare out at it, then retreat with a big shudder. last night i tried to entice her out onto nana's porch, and she made it a few feet then ran back inside. i wanted her to see that her eyes would adjust.

but the other issue is that she knows that a bear broke into the porch at upper saranac the other night. however, she has not said anything about bears per se.

( it made a remarkable mess. )

it is interesting how some facets of one's child are there at the start, and never go away, but other personality traits/predilections/issues/mannerisms etc emerge and then disappear entirely. it speaks to the importance of not assuming anything about your children, and definitely not labeling them. the minute you do, they might completely prove you wrong, or even more dangerously, you might permanently etch a way of being onto their person that could possibly have been entirely transient.

carter likes to be a cat..."meow, meow meow...nummy num?" and then i hold out my hands in a cup shape, and he pretends to eat.

or, he runs up to you, growls "rrrrrraaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!" and then points to himself and says "bea." which = beast.

we are having a blast at the gym in the mornings when ava is in school--we swim for a bit, and then today tried a mommy and me exercise class. HA! i lay down on the mat and he was on my like a fly on peanutbutter. though he did manage to destroy the four foot tower of steps (the exercise-class step lifters that are about a foot square and stack nicely on each other) that the other kids made. he totally ignored them, then when it was sufficiently high enough he ran over and pushed it hard. BAM! CRASH! i think every mother in there had a heart attack.

the teacher said "your house must be really childproofed."

tomorrow we go to see laurie berkner in concert. the level of excitement is stratospheric. though i am afraid ava is assuming that we are going to MEET her. i have been trying to explain the magnitude of the event, particularly comparing it to the size of the audience at the lion king, but i think she is still holding out hope that we are going to go hang out with the band. but the neat thing is that she knows all of the lyrics.

i cannot even begin to capture all of the imaginative play -- it quickly escalates to the point where i have no idea who she is, where she is going, who is with her (deer? rabbits? her sister?), and what they are doing. but one of the easiest ways to entertain her is to provide her with a bunch of bowls/cups (plastic or paper, obviously), and some interesting dry goods (herbal teas were a big hit) and let her "feed" her deer/rabbits. this can occupy her for more than an hour.

today they washed the playground at school. with buckets of soapy water. when i arrived, they had a line of kids hauling buckets over to the window, passing them through to the kids outside, who were rinsing the playground. you could not have found 18 more completely absorbed and intent kids. ava finally came inside, found me, tackled me (her new form of greeting), and announced "mommy, i got DRENCHED!"

and yet, for all her verbiage, she has suddenly started employing double negatives. i know this is her effort to sort out grammar, but it is like nails on a chalkboard. real nails. not just fingernails. i wince every time. and all one can do is gently correct--i cannot explain that a double negative makes a positive. she has not taken algebra yet.

it will be over soon, i am sure. and then we will be on to the next challenge.

we went to the "Great Adirondack Corn Maze" the other day. it was so so so fun. nervewracking, as little kids can slip out of sight quickly, but totally worth it. more on that later, but my essay on the outing should be published soon.

in short, we will be returning.