Friend

Gabriel has a new friend. He is imaginary. He doesn't have a name; Gabriel just calls him "my kid". He has elaborate conversations with his kid. He provides a voice for him. He apparently sleeps under Gabriel's bed. They like to read books together.

Oh, and did I mention, the kid is twenty?

Hope he doesn't get Gabriel into any trouble!

OK, so when I originally posted this, I forgot to include the funniest part. When I tried to play along with this, and offered to kiss "his kid" goodnight too, Gabriel got really quiet and then said, "Mommy, I'm just pretending!" with a very distinct "duh" tone to his voice.

Not enough hours....

Technology is a blessing and a curse. There. That's my profound thought for the day.

I would love to post something in this blog every day. I constantly am thinking about quirky things I want to write about. Every day there's something about one of the boys I would love to post about to remember. Sometimes the thoughts leave me before I have a chance to get them recorded. It's been really hard to find the time to post things since I went back to work.

Facebook is something I've grown to really love. The best thing about it is that I get to keep up with friends and family who live out of town. But I also love keeping up with people from high school, especially the ones who were just acquaintances back then but I now realize they would have been really fun to know better. I've also started "liking" many places in the Metroplex so that we can keep up with what's going on. But all of this takes time. If I don't check it at all during the day, I will breeze through a whole day just before bed. It usually takes me about twenty minutes.

But the thing is, it's already 11 by the time I get into bed with the laptop and try to unwind. I don't have an extra 20 minutes to check Facebook. Or an extra half hour to blog. I need to start reading or going to sleep at that time, not hunch over the computer until I find myself dozing off. (Which, by the way, I'm doing right now).

I'm also in the habit now of checking my IPhone last thing before I go to bed and first thing when I wake up. I tell myself it's because it's an easy way to wake up a little more. But I'm starting to wonder if I'm addicted to the thing. I caught myself telling Gabriel to put his play cell phone down during meal times, just after I had been checking Facebook with mine at the table. FAIL at fair parenting.

I could take time away from the boys to try to do some of it, but that's really messed up. "Sorry, sweetie, Mommy is really busy writing down what just happened for a bunch of somewhat strangers and can't play with you right now." Or, "I know you just said a new word, Joel, but I'm still busy trying to tell everyone about the last word you learned. Could you slow it down a little?"

So I have a choice. I can 1) cut into Mommy and me time, or (2) decide to cut out some of the technology and therefore miss opportunities to record our life and keep up with every one else's, or (3) I could get less than 6 hours of sleep every night. Which is what I've been doing.

Yawn.

Kitchen drums, then and now

Spring break week

Spaghetti!

We had a GREAT spring break week. Monday our fun activity was a visit to the library, which is always a favorite place that Gabriel likes to go. We took our neighbor, Helen, which made it even more festive. I was just proud of myself for remembering to ask her to come along, finally.

Tuesday one of Gabriel's classmates had invited the entire class and then some over for a play date, just so the kids could get together during spring break. They lived in Colleyville in a beautiful house that backed up to a park, exclusive to the neighborhood, of course. Only about 6 kids and moms showed up from his class, but altogether there were about 12 kids around Gabriel's age. Of course, my son was the Pied Piper who led them up to the playroom when everyone thought it was too chilly to play outside. We've since had a little talk about ASKING first to go certain places in someone else's house when you are a guest. Of course, I forgot the camera so have no pictures from this or other outings we had.

Wednesday we headed over to Mike and Susan's for a fun morning. Gabriel loved seeing the parakeets and especially riding the zip line, which he is still talking about over a week later. Joel had fun rolling chalk from one side of the driveway to the other. Thursday was St. Patrick's day, and we got our green on (as you can see in the above picture). We also walked Molly down to the duck pond, and created a new thing called Furniture Slam Dancing. For the first time in months, Gabriel actually wanted to take a nap. Then we visited Mamaw and Poppy in the afternoon.

Zoe and Bones peacefully coexisting, a very rare occurrence indeed.

Joel and Molly peacefully coexisting, something that happens quite often, until Molly barks at something. Then Joel bursts into tears and runs to find me.

Friday we went for a last minute play date to his school friend Luke's house. Luke's little brother, Will, was born a week after Joel. Everybody had a wonderful time, especially the Mommies!

Saturday we had promised Gabriel we'd go to the Fort Worth Auto Show. It was fun, and Jav and I enjoyed doing some looking. Even though we hope that a new car purchase doesn't hit us anytime soon, we want to have an idea of what we'll want. We loved the Prius and Honda's new hybrid, The Insight. Of course, back home in the garage Jav's car was plotting revenge on us for seriously looking and decided not to start Monday morning.

Joel in suspended animation.

When I looked at this picture just after taking it, I got really emotional. Look at my baby! How much he has grown and changed. God they grow up fast.

Sunday we had a neighborhood Mom's Group play date at a nearby park. The kids had a great time playing, then we all walked around the lake and attempted to feed the ducks. There were around 50 of them, but no takers for our bread pieces.

Gabriel, Bennett and Harper are getting to be pretty good friends. Bennett is a year younger and Harper is a year-and-a-half younger.

I really love this picture! So, so sweet.

So Spring Break 2011 was a resounding success, especially for Gabriel. Three play dates in one week AND the creation of his now-favorite past time Furniture Slam Dancing. Go Mommy!

I have a dream....a food dream, that is.

Since my last wordy post was about food, I thought I would continue the theme.

I currently do most of my grocery shopping at Wal Mart, something I am not very proud of. I hate how they put so many Mom and Pop stores out of business, and changed the face of small town Main Streets all across the country. But it is a convenient and affordable place to shop. They have also been adding organic products, and things like environmentally responsible cleaning supplies, which are also less expensive than other stores'. My dream used to be being able to shop at either Whole Foods or Central Market for everything, but those just aren't feasible options. Way too expensive.

So I have developed a new dream. Here's a working rough draft:

1. Purchase all produce and herbs from Farmer's Markets, where the food is preferably organic, and definitely seasonal. I would also love to one day purchase eggs, cheese and meat from a Farmer's Market.

2. Purchase bread, tortillas, etc.. from a bakery where they are made fresh daily.

3. Purchase fresh fish from a market.

4. Purchase spices, condiments, canned or jarred foods that aren't in season, snacks, and pantry items like olives and peanut butter from an organic grocery store.

5. Using all of these ingredients, SIMPLIFY SIMPLIFY SIMPLIFY meals.

All of this sounds good in theory. But in order to execute my dream I have several large obstacles to combat. I'll take each number one at a time:

1. The Farmer's Markets in our area are still quite expensive if you want seasonal, organic food from local farms. The one market we used to shop at regularly was affordable, but I found out that they have most of their inventory shipped in from other parts of the country and world just like most grocery store produce departments. FAIL on the seasonal. The Arlington Farmer's Market has a woman selling eggs, and I need to find out her prices. They also have one family farm selling beef, but it's really expensive also. I don't know of any local Farmer's Markets that have cheeses available. We're not really in dairy country!

2. We don't really have any bakeries in our area, other than the grocery store bakeries and a few Latino bakeries a little further away.

3. There is really no place to buy really good, safe fresh fish close by. Albertson's used to be ok, but has recently given in to area consumer demand and dropped almost all seafood except farmed salmon (mercury-filled) and catfish. Love catfish, but need some other healthier options. I want to try out the nicer Kroger that is up the highway, and therefore not as convenient.

4. Obviously, if 1 through 3 can't work, I can't afford 4 either.

5. Having two picky appetites in the house to feed would make this one challenging, to say the least, if not downright impossible.

Of course, I have an alternate dream of growing my own vegetables, planting some fruit trees, and have even read up a little on backyard chicken raising. My obstacles there are Lack of Time, Lack of Energy, City Laws and Not Being Able To Kill A Chicken if One Happens To Get Sick. That last one is a doozy.

Sigh. It's nice to at least have dreams. They give you something to work towards.

Love this picture

I have so much I want to write about, but just no energy or time with the busy days we've been having. So I'll just post this picture that was taken just before Christmas. We had just been to the zoo and then look who we ran into. What an exciting day!

A beautiful late winter day

Sense of security

Last year sometime, my mom had told me about an article in Parade magazine linking food memories and smells with kids' sense of self. The article basically said that kids who grow up in a home where there are home-cooked meals and good smells of food being prepared can relate those things later in life to where they came from. It said that even if you make your kids a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch, toast the bread a little to get those olfactory senses going.

I've written on this blog several times about how powerful my food memories are, and how even just thinking of certain foods can take me back to a time and place of long ago. And make my mouth water.

I figured out some time after we moved into this house that I love the smells from the kitchen wafting through the house. So much so that I have pretty much stopped burning scented candles of any kind. Because no matter how good they smell, they still don't smell half as good as a pot of soup cooking on the stove. Or a pork tenderloin, smothered in a honey mustard glaze, braising away in the slow cooker. Or yesterday's homemade spaghetti sauce slowly simmering for half of the day. The smell still lingered this morning. I hope I'm providing that feeling of security for my kids, even if they won't realize it for years to come.

I have a large bag of candles I need to give away, if anyone wants them.

Math part two

Sometime the universe lines up in crazy ways.

Just after I concocted my post about math last week, we got a package in the mail for Gabriel and family. At the time I assumed it was from my mom but it was actually from my late friend Cobra's husband, Mark. After seeing him at Cobra's memorial service, I had a few emails back and forth to him regarding Joel's birth, but then it seemed awkward to continue to have much contact with him. Even though he came to our wedding, he and Cobra had dinner with Jav and I a couple of times, and was sometimes around when I visited Cobra at their home, I didn't have all that much interaction with him and it just seemed strange to try and stay in touch with him. But we sent him a Christmas card, and I guess that motivated him to send a gift to Gabriel.

The amazing thing was that it was a book called, "You Can Count on Monsters". Each page has a number (from 1 to 100) on the left side, and a "monster" on the right that is some type of geometric shape. Every prime number gets its own monster. Non primes show the factors that make up that number and their monsters. Sometime they are distorted, or drawn in strange ways, but you can always tell which on is which. For example, the image above shows "7", one of my favorite monsters, a hexagon wearing glasses. This is the picture for fourteen, in which the hexagon is eating the "2" monster, which is made up of circles. It really is an awesome book, not just because the monster pictures keep Gabriel interested, but because it teaches math using pictures of something besides numbers. He loves the book and is now really good at counting to 100.

I sent Mark a long thank you note asking him to let me know how he's doing.