five days will see the janaszek/hemphill clan on the road to denver. that’s right, i said denver…colorado. twenty-four hours of driving bliss or hell. only five days remaining until we find out which one it will be for us. i’m on the fence right now–half of me (mostly my brain) says it’s going to be hell, and we need to get to our destination as quickly as possible; the other half of me (mostly my heart) says it’s going to be bliss, and we should be leisurely and see as much as we can on our way out there. i’m sure it will be somewhere in the middle.
we’ve got the thule box for the car, and seb has a new sleeping bag which he sleeps in all the time–day and night (i don’t care–it’s good practice!). last week, we tried putting the boys together in their room to sleep, hoping to break them in before this trip to not wake each other up. that didn’t work–or my nerves were just overly taxed and i didn’t deal with it well–so now we just hope to suddenly all sleep in the same room together. i’ve begun to madly download music (mostly from a blog called ((sm))all ages–thanks!) so i can create amazing cds. memories of a road trip are made sweeter by the music you listen to in the car. everytime i hear johnny cash or neil diamond or john denver (and many others) i see snapshots of the american landscape rushing by the car window from trips my family took when i was a kid. i see myself learning how to tie my blue and white sneakers in the backend of the station wagon we called “bluebell” in colorado, and then later crying over a young deer we hit somewhere in idaho. separate trips. separate years. but all my memories are tied together by music. my kids are a little young yet to be making memories like that, but hopefully they will at least have happy feelings conjured up when they listen to the music.
now it’s time for me to sign off and begin the cleaning frenzy. if the house isn’t clean while we are here, it may as well be clean while we’re gone, you know. i think this completely irrational cleaning thing is left over nostalgia for raod trips taken long ago.
Posted on August 28th, 2006
today seb had a pretend conversation on his “play” cell phone, an old phone that is swankier than any real phone brian or i will ever have, with his dja-dja:
“oh, hi!…how are you?… oh, you went swimming? did you have a good day today?… well, can you come over?… oh, you can’t… oh, cause you’re going home now, apparently…well, ok, bye.”
it was very funny. i almost had tears springing out of my eyes. not good–i was driving. we had a great day today, hanging out at home and then swimming at the country club where brian’s dad is a member. we played, we splashed, we swam. hard to believe after the night that we had last night. seb has never had more trouble sleeping as he has since he turned two and a half years old–something has clicked in his brain giving him bad dreams and night terrors. last night, i gave up my side of the bed for him so one of us didn’t have to get up every time he screamed (we’re total pansies when it comes to seb–if it was oren crying, we’d just ignore him). and the sad thing is he screams out words like, “give it back! give it back!” or “i want it, i want it,” clearly in response to some conflict he’s had with either brian or me, or the kids i’ve forced him to play with during the day. so when we can have a truly fun moment with him, like today when he was “talking on the phone,” it just tickles us pink.
and after having such a great day, not many conflicts, lots of fun, we figured tonight would be a breeze. seb took a nap this afternoon, which doesn’t happen every day anymore. getting ready for bed was uneventful. i left seb’s room without an argument of “just one more teeny-tiny drink of water” or “i have to pee one more time,” and with the repeated overture, “i love you too, i love you too, i love you too,” following me down the stairs.
brian and i have a nightly unwinding ritual after the kids go to bed which involves dinner and television episodes of something brain numbing on dvd. tonight was no different. we were enjoying our quiet time, munching on grilled pizza, when the screaming began. first seb. then oren. i said, “we’re never going to get a really really good night’s sleep ever again, but we at least can finish watching tv.” that’s when the dvd we were watching began to skip, and skip, and skip. stupid scratchy, netflix dvd!
now it’s our turn to scream.
Posted on July 16th, 2006
my kids haven’t been inspiring me to write lately, about them or anything else really. it’s not that they aren’t doing anything. they are. seb continues on his extremely slow journey towards being completely potty-trained, and oren is rolling, rocking, playing with his toes (which is very cute, i must say), and eating some solid foods (avocados!). it’s just me, i guess. uninspirable me.
the end of june is upon us, and i can’t believe the summer is halfway over already. the past couple of days being only in the 70s reminded me of mid-may. the rain we have been getting pretty often has slowed the progress of this summer’s sun tan. we’ve only been to the pool once! compared to last year when we were going at least once a week if not twice through june and july. i anticipate going more soon. i have a special sling so i can wear oren in the pool. exciting, i know.
seb has been listening to some short books on cd recently. we’ve discovered Skippyjon Jones, a naughty Siamese cat who thinks he’s a chihuahua. it’s exciting and fun to read, even if the “kitty boy” is disobedient and doesn’t listen to Mama Junebug Jones very well at all. the art work is great too. seb is also liking Dr. Suess’ Green Eggs and Ham. these things keep him occupied and entertained so he can do things like eat and let his mama drink her coffee in the morning and slack off in other ways.
seb and oren are starting to play together… more like, seb is starting to tickle and pull and poke oren, give toys to oren then grab them right back out of his hands. one moment i’m touched by seb’s generosity, the next annoyed and frustrated. oren is entranced by seb and watches wherever he goes and whatever he does. i’m hoping that oren is learning what not to do–talking back to mama and daddy, spitting at the kitty cats– as well as what to do–walking, running, talking, eating. even the things seb does that get on my last nerve make oren laugh and laugh and laugh.
so that’s what’s up with us these days. just life.
Posted on June 28th, 2006
this is fun to do…
oren at 5+ mos
sebastien at 5+ mos
Posted on June 11th, 2006
we’ve had quite a week, here, in the janaszek/hemphill home. a week i don’t ever want a repeat of, ideally.
this week was seb’s first week of potty training. on friday, may 5, brian and i endeavored to do it in the course of one day, following the rigorous methods of toilet training in less than a day. according to the book, if the instructions are followed closely, the average child can independently toilet him-/herself in a matter of hours. if they can’t after a whole day, well, then the child may be mentally retarded, but that is beside the point. needless to say, toilet training in less than a day didn’t work for our seb… but it got him off to an okay start, after we stopped the yelling and crying and gnashing of teeth, that is. he wears big-boy undies for most of the day and manages to stay dry unless totally distracted. things like birthdays and earaches became major distractions later in the week.
seb’s birthday was on friday. he turned three and got a bunch of good loot–a bike from mawmaw and daddy, a wagon from ja-ja and carolyn, a basketball hoop from pop-pop and grandma, and sandals from brian’s aunt, who we call zizzy. he got clothes too, which i get overly excited about. seb doesn’t much care. celebrations kept seb up late both friday and saturday nights, we all had a great time, but then he began to complain about an earache.
dawn on mother’s day found me, alone, on the couch in the living room, and seb upstairs in bed with daddy, tossing and turning and feverish. he had ceased to cry and moan every 10 minutes at about 6 am. at 7 am i took his temperature, and it registered 101 degrees fahrenheit. i called the doc, and we decided brian would take seb into the emergency room. seb stumbled around the living room like a drunkard while brian got ready to go. the e.r. doc diagnosed seb with otitis media, an infection of the middle ear, and his right eardrum had burst. a fun thing to learn on mother’s day is not that your child’s complaints of pain had perhaps not been heeded as well as they should.
and so we’re at the start of a new week. i hope it’s better.
Posted on May 15th, 2006
this word, education, is a scary word for me. it carries with it baggage from my own shoddy schooling, primary and secondary, and loads of noise when i start thinking about it for my kids. when i think about education, i remember liking it until i hit high school, but not at all afterwards. perhaps that is because in elementary and middle school i actually liked my teachers, and they not only liked me too, they genuinely loved teaching. i’m pretty sure every one of them did have a genuine interest in what they were teaching. i won’t go listing their names and what they taught me here, that’s information for a full-blown essay, but i will say that these golden years of learning for me were all in smalltown hays, kansas. can that have anything to do with anything? i don’t know. i could say something whitty like, kansas is so flat and boring that they sure better like what they’re doing. but that isn’t even that funny.
then i moved to a suburb of philadelphia at the start of high school and i found that education caused stress upon stress upon stress. and it wasn’t necessarily a deadline thing, it wasn’t because i was a slacker–sure, i was (and still am) a huge procrastinator, but self-inflicted stress is much different and less damaging than stress due to an incompetent teacher, a description i can use for probably half to 75% of my high school educators. i remember pleading with my parents on more than one occasion in more than one year not to make me go to school to take math tests. algebra II, trig, geometry, all were subjects i ended up trying to teach myself at home because all i could understand coming out of the teachers’ mouths was, “wah, wah, wah, wah, wah.” and that’s only funny when you’re watching charlie brown cartoons. that’s not funny when it’s your education. i can feel my stomach turn in knots just thinking about it. i honestly think i had the makings of an ulcer when i was a sophomore. other subjects weren’t so bad i guess, but i can’t remember enjoying them. they were tolerable. and i’m sure a lot of this had to do with my poor, teenager attitude; but why wasn’t anyone even trying to get through to me? why didn’t any of the teachers i had in high school care if i was enjoying learning from them? i was a good student, i followed the rules, and i wasn’t stupid… these questions bring up a whole other facet of this rambling that i think i won’t tackle at this point, but i will leave them there as food for thought.
a couple of other questions come to my mind now too, that i don’t necessarily have an answer for, nor do i care to really dwell on them much anymore because bygones are bygones, and i’m trying to NOT point the finger when i think of who to blame for all my problems as an adult–but where were my parents through all this turmoil and hell? granted, i didn’t ask my parents for help in high school. yeah right. we didn’t exactly have that kind of a relationship and i will take most of the blame for that. but were they really blind to my struggles? i remember them harping on me to do homework, or my dad asking us at dinner, “so, what did you learn at school today,” but they never actually knew what i was studying behind my closed bedroom door. they never checked any math problems or read any history or english papers. sure, i was a closed-off kid, but i was still their kid, and my education ball was still in their court.
but not to get mucked up in the past, the point of me asking these questions about education at all is that i have two brand new brains in my care, two tabula rasae floating around on which i need to decide who gets to do the writing. some of you reading this may be saying, “chill out woman, your oldest kid is barely three years old!” yeah, i know! but it amazes me that almost anytime i go out into company with other moms with kids who are sebastien’s age, the big question i get asked is, “have you started looking at preschools yet?” preschools? that’s next year, for one thing, and for another thing, it’s just preschool. it shocks me when i hear about the application process for preschools–isn’t that what college is for? and then i ask myself, why haven’t i been looking into this? why am i shocked? and i wonder if i shouldn’t be jumping into the frenzy now myself. these are all well-meaning moms who want the best for their kids. aren’t i a well-meaning mom? don’t i want the best for my kids? of course i do! so now i have to start asking myself these questions, thinking about education and what i want for seb and oren. so the past week or so, i’ve been a little amped about it, thinking of practically nothing else (well, okay, i’ve been a little obsessed with potty training seb too, but i’ll talk about that later), and i think we’ve decided that jumping into the mess of searching for a preschool is exactly the stress we want our kids to be able to avoid in their own education. we want to be laid back about their education so that they can learn in a relaxed and peaceful and enjoyable environment. and we’re also not so ready to get them out of the house all day and immersed in a world made up only of kids their own age. that seems scary to me, and it’s the same reason i have stayed at home to raise them instead of getting a job and putting them in day care.
so i guess what this has made us decide is, we (brian and i if you haven’t figured that out already) want to educate our kids. we want to be the authors of their blank slates. and that doesn’t mean sending them off to school on their own and hope to be able to help them out when they get home. all of these thoughts have whittled it down to a simple answer in the end–homeschooling–yet one that carries a lot of weight. but it also means that we can relax. we don’t have to search for a preschool. we don’t have to furiously fill out applications or go on visits or put our names on lists. we can stay at home for now and just have fun with the kids. and then when it’s time for them to start learning a little more formally, we can still stay at home and just have fun with the kids. and i’m not scared thinking about education for my kids anymore. just sort of excited.
Posted on April 27th, 2006
i’m having one of those days that makes up for all the horrible other days–last week, last month, the month before that…
i was just pondering this as i lounged on the couch in my living room casually reading a book. it’s about 70 degrees outside, and even though i need to be close while the kiddies are sleeping, the front door is wide open letting in the sounds from the street (stop HONKING already, my kid is trying to SLEEP!!), from the playground where kids are playing basketball after school (shut up already!! don’t you know my kid is trying to sleep right up there, RIGHT UP THERE!?!), thankfully not from the dog in the neighbors’ backyard. it’s a day of long perfect napping both for oren (who is probably coming down with some horrible illness) and seb (who has come down with said horrible illness). a day of cleaning windows, of strolling around the waterworks and shopping at old navy, of having a peaceful lunch with seb and IMing brian for a while before i have to type, “gotta go, oren’s crying.” oren and i took a turn around the backyard, looking at the daffodills and lillies, hostas and the clematis all peeking out of the ground. we sat on the front step in the sunshine watching the cars go by. now there’s time for me to just sit and bask in it for a bit…
cause i know tomorrow isn’t going to be like this!
Posted on March 30th, 2006
combination of complain and blog: when all a blogger does is complain.
“Don’t go to anklebiter.net, all they do is complog!”
(i’m stealing this idea of making up a new word from the magazine, Brain, Child. in the most recent issue, they have a couple of pages devoted to new words like this that other families have “made up”.)
Posted on February 28th, 2006
as we approach what we normally think of as springtime here in the northeast, the weather is becoming more and more like winter. what’s the deal? i guess this isn’t a new trend. it happened like this last year too. at least the days are getting longer, although the sun actually needs to be out more than once a week to notice this small blessing.
sickness reigns in our household this week. personally, i’ve been doing all i can to thwart this cold tyrant, so far successfully. he has not brought me down yet thanks to my echinacea tea (even if it is a placebo, it’s working for me!). the boys however, were easily defeated and have been snotty and cranky for days now. brian and i have been trying to “teach” seb to blow his nose so we can hear his wailing, “i need a kweeeeeenex!” a little less often. he’s picked up the blowing part pretty well–he holds a kleenex up to his nose and blows out a doozy–but the snot just ends up on the four corners of his face. the usefulness of the kleenex has eluded little seb. we’ll keep working on that.
so due to the winterwonderland we live in, the three of us have been sequestered inside. to me it feels more like a prison sentence, and i keep praying that the next time i peer out the window and it looks like it’s a nice 50 degree day, it will be, and we can all go outside. or at least seb can and the house can be in peace for a few minutes. i like my house and all, but a girl can only take so much indoors in a week.
i suppose this complaining is jumping the gun a bit. i mean, it’s not even technically march yet, but tomorrow may not hold an opportunity for me to write about it.
grumpy kids a-calling. time to sign off…
Posted on February 28th, 2006
brian forwarded me this link to our friend doug’s blog about how his two-year old boy isn’t talking yet. reading it encouraged me to look back to this time last year here on our site to see where we were with seb’s own lack of talking. (you can do the same by clicking on months feb-may in the archives to the right.)
a year ago february seb wasn’t saying anything but “mama” and “daddy” as well as “duh-duh” for just about everything else. i was stressed. the pediatrician encouraged us to get him speech therapy. we did. and in may, he was talking.
and now? well, now we can’t shut him up. we don’t want him to all the time, but it would be nice if he could every once in a while to do things like, oh, i don’t know, listen to us. there are times like today that i don’t regret getting a little help at all when he sings for a half an hour straight during his quiet (aka, nap) time or when he says things like “ma-ma, you vacuumed!! you used daddy’s very heavy vacuum. daddy vacuums every day”. we wanted him to be able to communicate like this with us. to hear his voice. to witness the wonder of his little brain developing.
a couple months or so ago, we had lunch with doug, and i told him to hold off on worrying about his kid not talking yet. i said something like, “wait until he’s three, and then start worrying.” if i had to do it over with seb, though, i probably wouldn’t change anything we did to get him to talk.
Posted on February 5th, 2006