I had an epiphany while shopping with the children today.

We took the kids to Madison because the girls needed swimwear for some trips they will be doing in April, and Isabella really wanted a dress for the Easter holiday dinner. While looking at things for her, I realized that I am no longer a nursing mother nor will I ever be one again.

I can wear dresses again.

Real dresses, not nursing dresses with weird necklines or access slits. Dresses one can find on the rack in any store at reasonable sale prices.

Look what came home with me:


Pretty, is it not?

Help Luis help the MDA

Every year, Luis is a happy volunteer for the Muscular Dystrophy Association's "Lockup" fundraiser. This promotion puts Luis "in jail" for a day until he raises enough money to post bail. His goal this year, his bail, is to raise enough to send two children to summer camp this year.

Can you help? Visit his MDA page to make a secure pledge online or give us a call at 608-214-5797 and we can arrange to pick up your pledge.

Thank you so much!

Some of my favorite memories of my childhood involve sitting on my grandma's bed, the sounds of the Lawrence Welk Show playing in the background while watching grandma and grandpa got ready to go out to dinner or Saturday evening mass. Grandma in her girdle, doing her hair and makeup. The scents of White Rain and Aqua Net mingled with her perfume as she dabbed on her rouge and slashed on that bright pink fuchsia lipstick.

During my childhood, moms still did their hair up in curlers to get ready for an evening out. A big Saturday night date always involved mom walking around in curlers all afternoon or sitting under the mint green polyester bonnet of her portable hood dryer as she folded laundry in the family room. Mom was never big on makeup, just a little lipstick and maybe a touch of eyeshadow, but her hair was always done up just right for Saturday night.

This all came back to me the other night as I was getting ready for my Saturday night mystery date.* I decided to put my hair up in hot rollers. There I was in the bathroom, doing my hair, putting on my makeup, spraying hairspray and dabbing on my heavenly Lancôme Hypnôse. Isabella walked by, came in and sat down to watch her mom get ready for Saturday night. She took it all in, and as the perfume and hairspray mingled, I saw her take a deep breath.

For the first time in my life, I truly felt like a grown up.



*Oh, we saw Sha-na-na in concert in Freeport. It was an absolute blast! If you like music from Grease, go see them with your friends who love to sing, dance and have fun. We had tons of fun doing the hand jive, dancing like fools in as we watched the show.

One set of tickets to an event.

One set of friends invited to share an evening.

Dinner at a nice Italian restaurant.

Luis has planned a surprise evening for us in early February. I have no idea what we are doing, just that it involves tickets, dinner and friends and that my husband thinks I will love it. The anticipation is killing me, but I promised that I won't try to find out what we are doing.

What I love most of all is the idea of a surprise date planned by and spent with the man I have loved for nearly two decades.

True love comes quietly, without banners or flashing lights. If you hear bells, get your ears checked.
~Erich Segal

I have never been a believer in astrology. I don't know why, as I embrace enough other woo-woo stuff and find relief in things that ought not to work like homeopathics. Astrology has never done it for me, for whatever reason.

That said, I am starting to wonder if there might be something to it.

A couple of times a year, things go haywire with the kids. We lose the ability as a family to talk, listen and understand. After a week or so of going nuts with this, I end up reading a comment from one friend or another online about Mercury being in retrograde. Every. Time.

Apparently Mercury rules communications, and when it goes retrograde (what on earth does that even mean??), it all gets messed up.

Sure enough, happened again last week and not only with the kids. What a mess all around on the communication front last few weeks. Oiy.

This quote has been making the rounds with my friends on Facebook lately:

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

~ Martin Luther King Jr.

It is so true, so powerful that I overwhelm with emotion whenever I read it. When we stay silent in the face of hatred, bigotry or injustice, we are doing harm.

Depending on who you ask, the English language has something like half a million to a million words in it. Yet, the average English speakers knows maybe ten or twenty thousand from what I have read. Given the richness of what we have available to use, this is rather pitiful.

Now, I don't pretend to be a wordsmith. I come across words I don't know rather often. But there are times when I am thankful for the variety of words that I do know.

Very late yesterday afternoon, the snow was falling thickly as the children played outside. The dim bit of light that remained in the day was not afternoon, evening or dusk. There was a word that fit the feel of the moment, one I see in books, but no one ever actually uses it.

Yesterday, I saw the gloaming.

I have read a few articles over the last few months on the Facebook Status Update. The gist of the articles is the the status update has become the new holiday letter - a place for bragging and "how good my life is" news.

I disagree.

For me, the status update is a window into a moment in a friend's life. The kinds of things that people chose to enter in that box tell me a lot about who they are. Personally, I like to try to find something positive in every day. If I reach the end of a day and cannot look back to find one thing that makes me smile, then my day has been pretty wretched indeed. My status updates try to glean out these gems from my day. The taste of a latte and chocolate scone when I really needed them. The joy of children and bubble wrap. The steamy good feeling of cooking up food for an evening with friends. The absurdity of walking in a lead mine in heels.

Writing about the good in our lives or the funny little quirky things is not false or a form of one-upmanship. It is about finding joy and humor in the million little things that make up every day of our lives.

Yesterday morning, Vincent came bouncing in searching for his baseball mitt and a ball, only to come back inside a few minutes later moping along about as low as possible. His friend changed his mind about playing catch, and Vincent was very sad. He went out to the backyard, where Luis was cleaning out his car.

A few minutes later, I glanced out the back window, and I saw Vincent glowing again. Luis was playing catch with him, hurt thumb and all.

We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today. ~Stacia Tauscher

I am a little freaked out right now. I was reading some news articles online with Simon on my lap, when he pointed to a photo of a woman on the screen and said "She die. Mama, no die, no die." The woman in the photo was killed Saturday evening when she was hit by a train. I asked him if the woman died, and he replied "She die, she die. That scary."

Creepy strange.

Last year I was lamenting the fact that our holiday meals are sometimes so steeped in tradition that I am afraid to mess with the menus too much lest I get a lot of flack from our families. I played around with a couple side dishes at last year's Thanksgiving menu. Imagine my surprise when, a couple of days ago, my mother asked if I was going to make one of those experiments again this year, a squash with coconut milk dish. This dish had a few raised eyebrows last year. I mean really, a dish with coconut milk at my extended family's German table? It was funny.

So, the coconut milk and squash dish is here to stay for a year or two. This year, I am taking out the apple pie and putting in a gingerbread-pumpkin trifle that I found in the latest issue of Gourmet. I am going to switch up the green vegetable too, but I have not figured that one out yet. I might even play around with the turkey, using a different glaze.

I still think that I had better stick with trying different stuffing recipes on other days though. Mom just would not understand if I replaced Grandma's recipe with another on a holiday.

So the kids were outside today, and Vincent was being a bit grumpy. Abigail decided to send him into the house because of his behaviour. He did not want to go. She walked him back to the door, when all of a sudden he ran ahead. The little stinker got to the door before her, opened it up, flipped the lock and closed the door again.

He locked them all outside so that he would not be able to be sent inside.

He is so not allowed to play outside for the rest of the day, but honestly, I am secretly laughing so hard over his ingenuity.

I sit here holding a sleeping Simon in my arms. He has been napping for about an hour now, snuggled up here.

There are a million things I need to do. My computer work is long finished. Yet here I sit because I know that this is my last baby to snuggle as he sleeps. Too soon he will be too big for this.

Sometimes it is the simplest things that make people feel special.

I know how important time is. This year, Luis finally gave me a Mother's Day that was special. We did nothing more than walk around in downtown Madison, get lattes at the Union, sit on library mall and listen to the drumming circle. What made it special was it was spending time doing what I wanted.

Abigail loves when her one uncle takes her on a date, and last year was radiant after her her other uncle finally took her shopping. Vincent was glowing after Luis took him to the car wash recently. They painted the camper, went to Farm & Fleet, ate dinner at Burger King. Nothing too special, but it was special because it was focused time for Vincent. He wore that Burger King crown for three days. Isabella especially craves time. If she is having a difficult week, simply taking her to the office with one of us makes a world of difference. She sits quietly and does her school, yet she soaks up energy of being alone with me or with Luis.

I used to sit and play cards for hours with my grandma. As a child, she gave me the time and quiet attention I needed, and later in her elderly years, playing crazy eights with her gave her what she needed. Sitting with my grandpa in the last years of his life was special. We didn't talk much, but what mattered was the fact that we were there side by side on the sofa and I was focused on him as much as he was on me.

Time and attention are the most precious gifts we have to give. I have been thinking of that because of the elderly man we met while at a park this weekend. We were camping, and we stopped at the Lion's Park in Lena for the kids to play for a while. We weren't there five minutes when I noticed a very elderly man watching the kids play. He edged closer and closer, until he was within talking distance. We talked with him, truly listened to what he was saying. We had no clue who he was, but I now know all about his youngest grandson's struggles with cancer, his red-headed great grandchild, his upcoming trip to visit his sister, and that his wife suffered from Alzheimer's. I will likely never see him again, but the time I spent listening to him and talking with him made a difference in his day and mine.

I thought I was only being kind to him at the time, but the peaceful feeling I gained from listening has lasted for days. It was a gift that went both ways.

I ducked into Cafe Claudeen today on a whim to pick up a biscotti, part of my 3/50 pledge. Once there, I ended up talking with Claudia and Kareesa for almost an hour. This is not the first time I have done that, and I sincerely hope it is not the last. One of my favorite parts about patronizing the local independent businesses is the lovely people it brings into my life. After talking with Claudia and Kareesa, I am often reminded of this saying:

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around. ~Leo Buscaglia

There is a calm, kind aura around them, a smile and a willingness to set aside what they are doing to simply talk. It is one of the things that makes me loving going into their cafe so much.

I have a nugget of a dream forming deep inside of me. Oh who am I kidding, I've had the dream for a while, but it has laid dormant deep inside there. A crack of sunshine has hit it and a little water has sprinkled on it until now the shoots contemplate breaking the surface.

Friends compliment my baked goods and breads all the time. Are they good enough? Could I sell them?

Never have I had a place bake commercially. A new kitchen has opened, and the owner will rent time to others.

Do I have the time at this stage of my life to tackle something like this? Do I have the desire? I do not know the answer to these questions yet.

The little dream sits still, beneath the surface. Maybe. Someday. Maybe.

I'm up far too late this evening, listening to the sounds of my family sleeping as the rain gently falls outside.

I have not been writing here lately. I could blame the fact that my work blog takes up much of my writing inspiration or that status updates on facebook steal the fodder for these posts, but neither is true.

I have composed many a post in my head over the weeks of this summer, but not taken the time to type them out. Consequently, when I read back over these months a few years down the road, there will be a gaping hole, like the one that stretches from back before Simon's birth. I will have missed out on the memories of things like the butternut squash plants that are on a mission to over take the garden, and Simon's decision to move to his own bed earlier this summer. Not recorded are things like Abigail's request to start wearing make up as she grows into a simply incredible young woman and Isabella's self-awareness as she requested to take a reading classes in summer school this year. I may not remember feeling crushed under stress of time and obligations this summer or the way that Vincent is very slowly beginning to learning to cope with young friendships.

I have been lazy, and I will regret not recording those thoughts. This blog is not just a shout into cyberspace, but more like a journal that I am okay with others reading. As a child, I wondered why my grandmother wrote in a journal daily, often just a few sentences about the weather, visits or gardening. I understand now. We write to remember. Those few sentences I wrote years ago help me to remember things like Vincent trying to pay me for letting him take laundry off the line or learning the hard way never to use anything other than a pie pumpkin in my baking. I can go back and stun myself with wisdom that had slipped my mind, this this thought I typed out nearly six years ago about Isabella:

Isabella is a little me in so many ways: intense, withdrawn, cautious, tenacious, awkward, insecure, not to mention that she looks just like me. It's like to effectively parent her, I need to parent myself and calm my tendencies to do the same things she does before I can react to her without both of us going into intense mode.

This is still so true, and it is something I need to remember more often.

I should take the time more often to record a few thoughts here.

Have you ever seen the movie One Hundred One Dalmatians? One my favorite characters has always been Rolly. He is little puppy who is perpetually hungry, saying in a charming little English accent things like "I'm hungry, Mother" "I'm not sleepy. I'm hungry", and "But I am. I'm so hungry I could eat a whole elephant."

Ever since Isabella's toddler years, when she opens the snack cupboard shortly after a meal and I question what she is doing because we just ate, she will reply "But I'm hungry mama." It makes me think of Rolly every time.

The other day, she did it again. Then she stopped and giggled. She told me that when she says that, she sound like the little dalmatian who is always hungry.

I love that she figured out all on her own something that has been my private little giggle for years.

So, I was listening to a program talking about health care in the US. It was being compared and contrasted to the Canadian system. Some facts were touted - the Canadians have a longer life expectancy, lower infant mortality rate, spend less than half of what we do, they are facing an expected doctor shortage, the long waits for elective or specialist care. The terrible keyword "medical rationing" was used.

Do people really think we don't have medical rationing in the US? We do, but it is rationed out by socio-economic status instead of by the government rationing across the board.

If you have money, you can get whatever care you want. I am guessing that is probably true in Canada too, by the way.

If someone makes too much to have government health care, but has poor private insurance, their care is rationed. I have been there. No dentistry care for years due to financial reasons, both as a child and as an adult. Not going to the doctor for certain things because we didn't have the money. I have friends who have to think long and hard about whether something warrants a doctor visit for their children because of the expense involved in an after-hours emergency room visit.

This is rationing, we just don't call it that.

I might question whether extreme treatments are valid in every case and support medical rationing to some degree, but that is beside the point. The point is that by no providing adequate medical coverage to all of our citizens, we are creating a system that requires some people to either abuse the system (depends on your perspective, but I have to say that some of those people who call an ambulance to get to the hospital for non-emergency care are doing so because they have no other way to get there) or for people to opt-out because they don't want to bankrupt their families.

This is still a form of medical rationing in my opinion.

Photo Day!

Look at Isabella swimming! We went to Lake Le-Aqua-Na and my darling princess had no fears at all of swimming around. Proud mama.
Vincent was all about helping make homemade ice cream at the Reunion. He enjoyed every bite.

Abigail caught a stray kitten and managed to hold it for a little while. She was so proud of herself. The kids worked together for quite a while to catch the kitten, but Abigail was the only one who managed to hold it.

Simon, looking very thoughtful as he hung out in the greenhouse at Inn Serendipity with Lisa and the adults as they talked.