48-Hour Days

This post is purely mommy, so if you aren’t interested, please move on. Something geeky will come along soon.

Okay. If you’re still reading this, you are a Mommy or you are actually interested in my mommyish side at least. I read lots of great mommy blogs and many of them inspire me. I comment sometimes, but mostly, I’m a lurker. Imagine my complete and utter shock when I got this from Christy at Paul Newman Shirt Days:

Dang. I’m humbled. I hardly ever post and when I do it is usually something geeky. But this is a great chance for me to give some blog-love to the great Mommy-ish blogs that I love to read as often as I can. There are rules to this thing and I need to nominate seven of my own favorites. Oh, joy!!

So, here they are:

Christy • Paul Newman Shirt Days

Right back at ya, Babe! Christy is creative and sweet and shy, but so very brave. I can identify with a lot of what she posts and I wish I had half the nerve she has. She’s real and I love that about her. I imagine she writes exactly the way she talks, which makes her posts incredibly easy to read.

Fern • Candle at Both Ends

Fern is eloquent, brave, intelligent, funny, sincere, truthful, and everything I could ever aspire to be as a blogger. She writes the posts I wish I were fearless enough to write, because I’ve identified with just about everything there. She’s going through some tough times right now, but she keeps her sense of humor and even turns her trials into something good for others. Visit her blog and read the articles she’s written at Examiner.com.

Melissa • Chasing Cheerios

Melissa’s blog is so full of fun activities! I’ve already gotten some great projects from there and pointers to other great projects. I don’t have the patience or the expertise to home-school my babies, but I am pretty crafty and having educational projects to do with the kids is so much fun. We all look forward to them. Bonus: the adorable pictures she posts of her own daughter doing each project.

Mrs. Chicken • Chicken and Cheese

Mrs. Chicken is another great writer. She, too, is brave and real. I identify with almost every post she writes. She’s just had her second child and through her writing I relive those stressful transition months where the oldest clamors for attention over the cries of a newborn. Chin up, Mrs. Chicken. It gets better!

Jodie • A Mom and Her Camera

Jodie takes simply gorgeous photos. I love seeing them and I wish I lived closer to her so I could hire her for a family portrait. I especially love the newborn pics. She’s inspiring me to pull the camera out much more and to capture every moment I can because they just go by so freaking quickly. She’s also so much fun to read.

Erin • Mama Said No!

I found Erin’s blog when she did a guest post for Mrs. Chicken. She’s so fun and her son is the same age as mine, so there are many times that I feel her pain. She writes just the way I imagine she talks and she has such an incredible sense of humor.

Allie • No Time For Flash Cards

This is another great site for projects to do with the kiddies. We’ve already done some and I’ve bookmarked others for the future. Allie was a preschool teacher and I love how she gives ideas for working with different ages for each project. She provides step-by-step instructions illustrated with pics of her adorable son. Great resource!

So, there they are! These are my favorite mommy-ish blogs. Go read, laugh, cry, and enjoy them as much as I have.

We went to the park today. I haven’t been there since last year when a group of rowdy kids decided it would be fun to push then two-year-old Timmy around on the jungle gym. That experience made me a little nervous about going back, but the kids needed to burn off some energy. They don’t like playing outside at home, but give them slides and ladders and swings and they are very happy.

When we arrived I saw no one. I breathed an inward sigh of relief. Then a tiny little boy toddled over a hill, followed closely by his mother. Soon I spotted his big sister going down the slide. I stiffened a little bit, but the woman seemed nice and her daughter was Timmy’s age, so there didn’t appear to be any threat of bullying.

Timmy and this other little girl immediately hit it off. He ran right up to her and yelled, “Hi!” She yelled an enthusiastic “Hi!” right back at him. From that moment they chased each other, raced down the slides, and told jokes to each other that only three-year-olds get. Kellie and the baby brother did their best to keep up. All four children had a great time and us Moms relaxed. Then they left and the next family came.

This time it was a lady on a cell phone and three boys. The youngest was Timmy’s age, but the older two were quite a bit bigger. This made me worry and I prepared myself for the tantrums as I dragged my kids off the playground and to the safety of home.

But these kids were awesome. You’ve never seen two older boys who were more eager to play with little kids. Each boy had a bottle of bubbles. The youngest wasn’t interested in his and ran for the swings. Of course, Timmy came running over yelling, “I want bubbles, Mommy!”

The lady was really super nice and gave the youngest child’s neglected bottle of bubbles to Timmy. He happily blew soap solution all over himself while the older boys blew magical clouds of bubbles for Kellie to run through.

Watching my children interact with other kids and make new friends so easily, I couldn’t help but remember being a kid and the absolute dread I had of strangers. Still do. Seeing other kids on the playground would have been enough to make me beg my Mom to take me back home. Painfully shy, I’ve always had a rough time making new friends. To this day, I have a terrible fear of walking into a room of new people by myself and I make my husband promise to stay by my side if I don’t know anyone. (Lucky for me, he’s the understanding type)

So seeing my kids greet these new people without any reservations or fear just makes my heart soar. I can’t help by admire the reckless abandon with which they met these strangers. Kids so much want to be like their parents someday, but maybe someday I can be like them.

Today was the first day of VBS for Timmy. He was pretty excited to go, although he didn’t really understand what it was going to be. He excitedly put on his special t-shirt (a yellow one he picked out with an iron-on we got at registration) and dutifully carried a pack of Oreos out to the car (part of our donation to the cause). He started to take off down the driveway, but I was scared he’d drop the cookies and bust them all into little pieces, so reluctantly he walked. He was really, really careful with those Oreos!

When we got to church it was a madhouse. There were two registration tables set up in a narrow hallway and all the kids, parents, and siblings were being funneled through them. The two elderly ladies handling sign-ins could barely hear me when I shouted his name! There were kids crying everywhere, with Moms telling them how much fun they’d have and just to give it a chance and they’ll make all kinds of new friends. I started to worry that my little man would want to go home, too. But he didn’t seem to notice them. He was anxious to get to school.

We walked back to the preschool classroom where the three-year-olds and four-year-olds were and got his name tag. As soon as he saw all the familiar toys, the play dough, and the other kids he took off. I had to call him back for a kiss! Not to worry, my little man would love school.

When Kellie and I picked him up, the first thing he said was, “Mommy, I was getting so angry.”

Puzzled, I asked, “Did you get angry at one of the kids?”

“No.”

“Were you angry with your teachers?”

“No.”

“Why were you so angry?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t want to talk about it.”

We met Daddy for lunch at Bob Evans because he happened to be working very close by. At lunch he told Daddy the same thing. Daddy asked the same questions I did and got the same responses. Then a lightbulb went on.

“Buddy, were you angry because school was taking so long?”

“Yeah. I was angry because it was a long time and you weren’t picking me up, but then you picked me up and I said, ‘I was getting so angry.’ But I was not angry anymore.”

Uh, oh.

Since this conversation we’ve asked him several times if he still wants to go and the answer is always an emphatic “Yes,” which is a good thing. I just hope the answer doesn’t change in the morning.