Category: family

Rule #1

by Karen, posted in family, fitness, no fear, tweens

my daughter fell off her horse at her riding lesson last week. her instructor said something like, “is this your first time falling off a horse?” fortunately, her dad brought her to that lesson, not her mom, so there were no hysterics involved. when he asked her what happened, why she fell, she said, “I let go of the reins”.  which leads me to

Rule #1: always wear your helmet!

i understand that “first time” implies there are other times to come. i try not to worry too much about this. i try but i don’t succeed (hel-lo? remember Christopher Reeve?). i looked up some info online about horseback riding lesson: http://www.wikihow.com/Get-a-Child-Horse-Riding-Lessons

now that i know a little more about what i didn’t know about horseback riding, i feel like i can comment a bit on this topic.

  1. about wearing jeans: my daughter did just fine wearing jeans and then one day she finished her lesson with a complaint that her leg hurt. upon investigation, we found a large round blister on the inside of her shin just below the knee from the inseam of the jeans…prior to that day she had been wearing long johns under the jeans (it was COLD, riding outside in february!) but in the warmer weather she had adjust her riding wardrobe to prevent injury.
  2. another point made in the online article was to ask your child if she prefers private lessons or riding with another person. turns out, she prefers riding with others.
  3. it is a good idea to shop around. ask for referrals from friends whose children ride (or ride themselves) but be prepared to make up your own mind. just because someone speaks highly about a facility doesn’t mean it’s right for you or yours. also, prices for similar services can vary widely.

the bottom line was that she did get back on, which i understand is a sure sign that she  really does want to learn to ride a horse. 🙂

10 things i’ve learned about roosters

by Karen, posted in family, raising chickens

It all started off innocently enough; 26 chicks in a small cardboard box arrived in the spring…we learned some things from books and friends in advance, but some things are learned by doing, through “on the job training”.  1.when ordering new chicks from vendors, you often will not receive all female chicks . this is not good for several reasons, which leads us to …. 2. boy chickens often do not play nice with each other.  3. boy chickens grow up and start crowing pretty darn fast. 4.The dollar store earplugs don’t work. 5.Putting a pillow over your head does work some, but it interferes w/breathing, so can’t be a long term solution. 6. no one in the family hears the crowing at 3:07am except me.  (DAWN I  could handle; but 3:07AM?)  7. “free to a good home” is not an effective advertising strategy for this purpose; you can’t GIVE away a rooster. Nobody wants them, or certainly nobody wants more than one. 8. Except some people do; they will take all you have, as long as you don’t mind if they eat them. 9.. A friend with  a farm may offer to take them, so they can “free range”, which is a euphemism for “being eaten by hawks”.  10. the bottom line? we would do it all again. in fact, we have, several years in a row now. it has become one of our spring rituals. 🙂

here are some resources to get you started if you are interested in learning more:

1. http://www.idealpoultry.com/

2. http://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/index.html

 

the terrible 10’s?

by Karen, posted in family, tweens

my thoughts are harkening back to my 10 year old daughter’s toddler years this morning…they are not warm and fuzzy thoughts.  after her 5th “No! Don’t talk to me! I don’t want to talk about it!”, all before breakfast, i was having deja vu…haven’t we been here/done this before? seems like we’ve come full circle in her first decade of life; i remember similar behavior from her (and her older brother, come to think  of it) when they were in their “terrible 2’s”, that lasted until they were nearly 4 yrs old…hope the terrible 10’s don’t last quite so long. it would be nice to have a breather before the teenage angst sets in. any other parents of 10 year olds experiencing this? how do you manage it?

here is a website with some advice about how to manage some types of close encounters with your children:

http://kidshealth.org/parent/positive/talk/temper.html

bowling

by Karen, posted in family, fitness, tweens

recently i went bowling for the first time in more than a decade. i took my daughter and was immediately presented with a bowling dilemma: to add bumpers, or NOT to add bumpers? that is the question. with bumpers, will they ever learn to throw the ball properly so that they can one day bowl without them? without bumpers, will they become so demoralized by their gutter ball induced lack of measurable scores that they will not want to play ever again? hmmmm.

how do you other parents out there solve the bowling bumpers dilemma?

the worst thing about bowling? the SHOES (ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww).

the best thing about bowling? spending time having fun with my family doing something other than eating.

bottom line: bowling is fun.  here’s a link to find a place to bowl near you:

http://www.bowlcandlepin.com/bowlzip/index.htm

trust your instincts

by Karen, posted in family, fitness, tweens

well. my daughter has been riding at the new barn (http://home.comcast.net/~goodrich-puffer/index.html) for a while now, and loves it here. she is learning things like “posting”, “diagonals”, and “emergency dismounts”…oh my! more importantly, i am not experiencing that vague feeling of uneasiness that never left me at the other barn…the “i can’t put my finger on it, but something doesn’t seem quite right” feeling that mothers (and others) sometimes feel. i don’t feel like that at all when she is riding here. plus, this instructor taught her more in an hour than the prior one did in a month. this instruction makes the other look like…pony rides. expensive pony rides.

have any of you ever had a “gut feeling” about something that turned out to be true? did you follow your instinct right away, or wait awhile first?

happy easter

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, good grief, tweens

one of my favorite holidays growing up was easter. my father loved easter, and always went out of his way to make it fun for us. we had the requisite easter baskets, usually one of the prepackaged, pre-filled ones from the closest department store (we were a family of 4 kids born in 6 years, after all), but i always loved mine. the best part of the day was the easter egg hunt. dad would fill the plastic easter eggs with small change and “hide” them around the house (my father was disabled and not-so-agile, so most of the eggs were at about waist level, in plain sight). we would race around until we had found them all.

this year is the first that neither of my kids believe in the easter bunny anymore. here’s the funny thing about that though: they both still expect baskets and booty from the fictional bunny. as a mother, i certainly don’t want to disappoint them, but this year i wanted to focus on “less is more” and so i scaled things back some. instead of large, overstuffed baskets, i made them easter bunny bags to hold their candy (http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/home/holiday-ideas/easter-table-decorations), an idea i got from Good Housekeeping Magazine. they were easy to make, and more importantly, they were quick, since it was 10pm on easter eve before i got to actually assemble said bunnies. the other good thing about these little bunnies is that they form an enclosed space within which the contents must conform; no candy or toys spilling out over the tops and the sides…another reminder for me not to go “over the top” with filling them.  i did, of course, fill the plastic eggs with small change for the egg hunt. even though the morning will be rushed, with us getting ready to drive an hour and a half to have dinner with family out-of-state, and the older child getting ready to go to work, we will have our traditional egg hunt.

i would not want to miss that opportunity to honor my dad. 🙂

what easter rituals does your family have? are they carried over from your childhood?

diary of a wimpy kid

by Karen, posted in books, family, tweens

whenever there is a movie that gets my child to request (and then to actually read) the book that spawned it, i am happy. this month it happened in reverse; the movie of which i speak is “The Diary of a Wimpy Kid”. we are having my daughter’s 11th birthday party at Smitty’s (http://www.smittyscinema.com/) and this is the movie she chose, having read the “diary of a wimpy kid” and subsequent offerings in the series over the past couple of months (http://www.wimpykid.com/), long before she knew that there would be a movie coming out about it. she even has the movie poster hanging in her room, a gift from her brother. now, we seem to be surrounded by all things wimpy…and it’s all good.

have any of you adults seen a kids’ movie lately that made you laugh out loud? this one definitely will. some of the kids had seen the movie already, but even they were excited to see it again, and every one of them sat in their seats for the entire hour and 33 minutes, eyes on the screen.

spring ritual

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, gardening, italian

my italian grandmother always said her birthday was on the first day of spring. actually, every so often she was right; her birthday was march 21st, and spring is usually on march 20th, but not always:(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equinox).  one sure sign that spring had come when i was little was The Making of the Dandelion Salad. my grandmother would send me out into the yard to gather dandelion leaves. this wasn’t as straightforward as it sounds. there were rules that must be followed:

1. leaves must be chosen from plants that had not yet flowered, otherwise they would be too bitter. 2. you had to look for plants that were far from the road, otherwise the exhaust from passing cars would poison them 3. leaves must be washed at least 3 times, because they were pretty dirty, what with actual dirt,  plus who knew what manner of animal had befouled the leaves in some manner? 4. the salad must always have olive oil and red wine vinegar, salt and pepper for dressing. that’s it. 

as i’m writing this, i realize one of the implicit gifts from this practice: nana always told me why i was being asked to do something a certain way. that was as important to me when i was 10 as it is to me now.

do you have any rituals from childhood that you remember? do you still practice any of them? who was an unsung hero in your childhood?

oh, the rain!

by Karen, posted in family

gather the animals! build the ark!~actually, we have to (re)build the retaining wall that collapsed last night,  sending wildlife (mice, night crawlers, grubs as big as your head…) out into the night. also the one that held UP the back stairs, and the one that held BACK the water that had collected over the past several weeks of heavy rains that comprised the winter and first part of spring here this year, the water that  immediately found its way  into the basement, which is also my son’s room. you know, with the new furniture (to paraphrase billy costa from the  “matty in the morning” radio show on 107.1 (http://www.kiss108.com/pages/Matty.html): nothing stops the water). after work, i had to put on my swimmies and go to Lowe’s to buy a wet vac then go home to help husband (re: try hard to stay out of his way)  try to get ahead of the water that was coming through the basement wall and floor. at one point, he sent me to boil water and rip sheets…which i set off to do…finally! something i could do to be helpful! i was feeling pretty good until i recalled that this is the way that women traditionally got rid of their men during childbirth…give them some useless task to do to make them feel useful but the purpose of which was really just to get them out from underfoot until the baby was born! sigh. and to think i fell for this. ultimately i did feel a bit better when i realized that after i delivered (a wet vac, not a baby), my getting out of the way really WAS a big help.

any basement water horror stories out there?

do the thing you think you cannot

by Karen, posted in family, no fear

when i was invited to go indoor rock climbing by a friend, my immediate (inward) response was  “no freakin’ way!”, followed by a polite “no, thank you,” expressed outwardly.  then, one of my favorite quotes came to mind: “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.”~ Eleanor Roosevelt. i kept thinking about this quote and began thinking about the rock wall and “do the thing you cannot do” became an edict. i went. i did the thing. it was awesome. only 2 really scary moments 1.looking down from the top of the first scaled wall (they don’t say “don’t look down!” for nothing) and 2. when it’s time to come down, you let go and push away from the wall, and …dangle for a moment. really.

the bottom line? it was a blast (notice word choice is consistent with my inner 12 year old).

http://www.merockgym.com