Here's a little list, I'll call it: "someday, we'll be home together"
These notebooks on etsy would almost be too beautiful to write in...but I would try just so I could turn the lovely covers and leaf through the vegetable dyed pages.
I think I have the taste of a nineteenth century old woman because if I could afford to wallpaper every room in my house with these wallpapers, I think I would.
Mornings with this stovetop cappucino maker would make me feel like a well bred european with a flat in the city, and a cottage in the country with an aga oven, a few spaniels and some wellington boots...basically a character from a rosamund pilcher novel and my dream come true.
I'm all for the modern conveniences looking like electronic fossils of bygone eras so this and this would likely find a place in my future (dream) house (where money were no option).
What joy to stir my cappuccino with this spoon!
Sort of trendy but seriously, who wouldn't want a pop art poster of an owl, typewriter and or telephone pole?
Who says these roofs are only for pole barns and outhouses? I want one on my house.
And of course, all things anthropologie but especially this towel and this table cloth
Inspired by Laura's blog about her twins and the idea that even a routine--when thinking about posterity--is interesting, and as an ego centric log of how much I do in a day, here is a sampling of our days, with today as model.
5-6am feed henry, give jake bottle #1, change first two diapers
6-7am get jake, henry and finn up, change diaper #3, feed all three breakfast.
7-8am clean up breakfast, change diapers #4 and #5, henry goes back down for morning nap
8-9am play trucks on living room floor and keep jake from mangling stereo system. finn in time out #1 for pushing jake. Gardener William arrives to finish trimming fig creeper on pool wall and clean out flower beds.
9-10am Jake in timeout #1 for screaming, Jake goes down for morning nap, change diaper #6, color with Finn on the back porch, henry wakes up, feed henry.
10-11am jake wakes up screaming, give him bottle #2, get him up, change diaper #7 and #8, retrieve four pieces of cat food from Jake's clenched jaws and clean up large puddle of cat throw-up. talk to next door neighbor about collecting her mail while she is away next week while finn pours contents of his sippy cup into pots of herbs by back door. finn in time out #2 for screaming. james off work for break, run to post office to mail lease to tenent in Indiana.
11-12am come home, cook brats on grill for lunch, finn colors on back porch, jake chews on plastic ball pit balls in playpen and henry rolls over on baby mat/gym thingey. bring everyone into kitchen for lunch, eat lunch, offer william the gardener a brat and let unknown pool guy into backyard to check saline function (?) sounds suspicious, he says andy sent him, andy not known to me.
12-1pm bring james lunch, put finn down for nap, change diaper #9, follow jake around house as he follows cat around house, feed henry.
1-2pm put jake and henry down for naps, change diapers #10 and #11. clean up lunch dishes, puddle of spit up and four more spots of cat throwup discovered in dining room. rearrange furniture on back porch and replace pillows with baby gates to block off non-baby-proofed half of porch. Watch part of episode of Jon and Kate plus 8, which makes me feel better about my life.
2-3pm sit by pool and read magazine, take short dip in pool and get dressed, talk to terminex guy who is coming to check on termite traps (did not know we had termite traps), get all three babies up, change diapers #12, 13 and 14, make bottle #3
3-4pm feed henry, hook up trailer to bike with james and take all babies on ride to library.
4-5pm jake in timeout #2 for screaming, make dinner while finn sits on counter asking for a bite of everything, jake goes down for evening nap.
5-6pm feed all babies dinner, james gives jake bath, clean up dinner dishes and play trucks on coffee table, share bowl of ice cream with finn.
6-7pm eat dinner standing up in kitchen with James, put Jake to bed with bottle #4, give finn bath, read books and put him to bed, feed henry and put him to bed.
7-8pm watch recorded episodes of the Colbert Report and Project Runway.
8-9pm take contacts out, read in bed, go to sleep.
Take away the terminex guy, the neighbor and the post office and add sick scott at home, trips to safeway for gatorade and making cups of chicken broth and you have yesterday's schedule.
"The dream and the knowledge of alternative futures is with me. I choose my life with every breath I take."
On Sundays, after I have woken up at 5 or 6 to feed Henry...I go back to sleep. I'm not sure you all realize the magnitude and revolutionary-ness this represents. On weekdays and Saturdays, I wake up to feed Henry, maybe put him back in his crib maybe bring him to the kitchen to pour a cup of coffee and make Jake a bottle and turn on good morning america while I lay out breakfast for the three boys, and the day has begun.
On Sundays, when I wake up again, to the noise of a breakfast I am not making or the cats running hissing away from Finn's smacking feet on the pergo floors or Jake screeching to be given a bite of whatever Scott is eating, I can go back to sleep, as many times as I want.
And on Sundays, when I have finally slept as long as I possibly can, I lay in bed for a number of minutes and rub my eyes. And then I sit up in bed and look out at the yard or the sky. And then I swing my feet over the side of the bed and wait to let the blood adjust to my legs and my head and then slowly, walk to the bathroom, put my contacts in, maybe trim my bangs or cut my fingernails. And then, when I am fully awake and slightly more groomed and in a significantly better mood than when I fell asleep, I come out to the kitchen and greet the boys with a temporary surplus of patience and magnanimity.
It's a wonderful thing to sleep and wake of my own volition. Where waking is normally instantaneous and unnoted, a springing (or more likely a trudging) to action; Sundays are languid and unrushed. In my current role, the luxury of languishing is really indescribable.
I've just finished reading The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, Nights in Rodanthe by that incorrigible Nicholas Sparks, gave up reading a tedious German novel called Stones from the River after about 300 fruitless pages and started up The Constant Gardner. This strange combination of narratives is swilling around in my head and I'm quite certain will produce some gem of a thought about gender and childrearing and the overlap of the feminine voice in various stereotypical roles.
But that epiphanic connection has not quite coalesced yet. So I thought instead I would tell you, "dear void" that tonight completely free of children, I drove my sister and brother-in-law's flashy yellow convertible to the local movie theater and saw the Dark Knight. As it would happen, a couple with my exact identical Phil&Ted's stroller wheeled their sleeping infant into the theater behind me and took the seat on the aisle beside me, the stroller wedged in the handicap spot between us. So much for getting away from the kids for the night. I shot them very dirty looks in the darkness between previews. The baby must have sensed my hostility so made not a single peep throughout the entire, rather ear splintering movie. After jumping out my own seat a couple of times, I actually started feeling bad for the kid and marvelled at his or her resilience.
The movie was very good actually but it seemed strange sitting in the theater on my own and then coming out into the parking lot in the pouring rain and driving home without talking to anyone about it. And James hasn't seen it yet so I feel a bit untranslated-the curse of the extrovert-not having processed the experience of the movie with anyone else. So have any of you seen it? And if so what do you think? Without spoiling it for any one who hasn't, I'm really interested in the Joker's theory about chaos and motive and the whole sense of balance in the movie; the hero they need, not the one they want; Batman and the Joker's mutual reliance on one another...I don't know. The whole sense of the power of fear to create chaos. It's a very thickly layered movie, if you want it to be.
"Things are looking up" or "Finding more ways to get out of the house"
3 comments Posted by Kate at 4:45 PMSince James got home and we've had a chance to really settle in to our "real" schedule, things have been going much more smoothly, or I am less of a basket-case, or the boys are behaving better, or Meg's visit dissipated the bulk of the chaos, or the stars have aligned, or whatever concoction of elements has come together to put me in a significantly better mood. Sorry for those last angry posts representing the emotional overflow of our first and last experiment with solo tri-baby-watch or as I will forever remember it, "the weeks of the screaming trio".
All is looking much brighter now, especially with the addition of two brilliant Craigslist purchases--the kiderooz bike trailer/double stroller and an old school, hang off the back of your bike kid seat (just like the one I sat in back in the eighties) making for one heck of a caravan behind Mandy's teal beach cruiser. After a trip to Wal-Mart to buy an enormous planetary-orbit-of-its-own-
The unintended comedy of this picture (I seem to be cultivating my circus acts-we just need a monkey) is that the bike cruiser has an enormous, cushion-your-big-fanny-seat and the bracket to attach finn's seat barely bolts to mine with room for his legs. So he sits so close behind me that his huge helmet bumps against my back as he turns his head to look at passing traffic. Which I think in Native American would make my name, "sunburned woman with large headed papoose pulling two dazed babies and a noodle".
I love the whole contraption though. I feel free, as strange as that is to say, and I foresee long productive rides to the grocery store or the coffee shop or the scrapbooking store where upon arrival, I lock up the bike, unhook and attach a front wheel to the trailer to convert it to a stroller, take finn by the hand and...voila! My dad would be so proud.
- every time you come back into the room where she is entertaining 1 of the 3 babies, she sighs loudly and gives you a stricken face
- throughout the day she states her waning interest in children of her own saying things like,"huh, I thought I wanted five kids. Now I don't think I want any." and "geeze, you can see why they warn you about teenage pregnancy."
- when coming back into the house after having been at the beach with oldest and most difficult child for no more than 30 minutes, both babies are crying, one with a diaper on backwards and the remnants of his previous dirty diaper still all over him, toys are strewn helter skelter and she looks at you with pained expression of trapped animal.
- when asked to feed middle child lunch (all elements of the lunch lain out before her on the table and child already in high chair), she shrugs and says"I've never done that before" and after feeding him half a jar of baby food, they are both covered in the red goo of savory beef and potatoes. She gets up to clean herself up and leaves the gooey (and still hungry) child to me.
- when food or drink are offered to her in attempt at hospitality, she says in slightly annoyed voice, "when I'm hungry, I'll go looking for it" and does not eat the entire day.
- she calls your son ambiguously derogatory terms with a gradually more aggravated tone throughout the day starting with "little monkey" going to "little monster" and sticking at "you little devil" with no playful edge to the moniker.
- She tells smallest of babies (5 month old) not to roll off the couch as she rummages in her purse to find her ipod earphones.
- She manages to look both relieved and honestly put out that you won't need her tomorrow.
sample sized blush with its similarly tiny brush is completely useless to me. There is no way that I know of, to apply the blush from compact to cheek in a natural circular motion. It always looks like a thick tipped pink highlighter was colored haphazardly on my cheeks.
the little scoop that comes in the ridiculously expensive tin of formula is like-wise annoying and while provided for measuring out the right amount of powder for designated water, the diameter of the scoop is about the same as the diameter of the bottles so when dumping the, again, very expensive formula from scoop to bottle, much is sprinkled across the charcoal granite counter tops. The contrasted residue left after each and every bottle is made makes me want to scream.
Taking a walk with three boys takes much organization and coordination. Putting all of the boys in the car is similarly difficult. Bringing lunch adds to this effort exponentially. So when I pack Finn, Jake and Henry into the car with all parts of lunch and stroller and toys and plugs to go find the Kailua Beach Park and when we get there, I have two flat tires on the stroller and it starts to rain, it is a grave disappointment and much effort wasted. We walked a little ways to a covered picnic table anyway but then the famous--and until today absent--trade winds blew our lunch all around and we had to concede defeat, go back to the car and eat the rest of our lunch at home.
Fake crying is even more frustrating than all these combined. Finn sees me react to one of the little boys' crying and realizes in his developing mind that he can get my attention by crying. So he does, in the most annoyingly manipulative way that makes me want to put him in time out for the rest of time.
James is out of town for training in Portland this week and next and Scott is hardly around while any of us are awake so I am on my own. I have known this was coming and assured all worried parties that I would be fine, that plenty of parents of three children and more do it all of the time and I would just adjust, step up and it would all be over before any permanent damage could be done to any of us. Yesterday, I was sure this was the case. I got everyone up, fed, bathed, entertained and generally ran the household effectively with very few mind blowingly awful moments.
But today was just chock-full of them. I finished the book I had been reading while Jake was feeding himself a bottle, Finn was still in bed talking to himself and Henry was squawking beside me in bed. The ending was just really, really sad in that it-could-end-no-other-way sort of ending, which just made me put the book down and cry very hard because it was sad and because I didn't want it to end.
To rally my spirits, I fed everyone and put them in the car to go for a drive up the coast, to actually see the lovely coast line so famous for surfing and breathtaking views. I consulted the next door neighbor, as she came back from the beach, on the best route and then we set off. I went too far and didn't bring enough snacks or pacifiers or whatever the magic combination of soothing instruments and so half way through our hour-long outing, everyone was screaming at the top of their lungs. Including me. I pulled over a number of times to replug and redistribute toys, making the trip even longer and by the time I had turned around to go home, we got stuck in some mind boggling traffic at 11am, went through a construction zone that materialized in the time we had been gone and then followed the slowest little dodge spirit along the last 3 miles of winding road to home. I nearly back ended him to help the process along.
All three boys were fine really; I think they were crying mostly because everyone else was (this seems to be a common theme) but by the time we pulled into the driveway to my enormous relief, they were all hiccuping with subsiding sobs.
I'll do better tomorrow. Maybe.
Two weeks ago today we flew from the misty cool spring of Portland to this humid splotch of land in the Pacific to start up this lovely adventurous (read here maybe totally insane but trying to be upbeat) chapter of life. We are raising three boys age two and under who are each in their own way adjusting to transition with varying levels of patience and grace. Finn is two in all of the lovely ways that two is. He seems to be finding hawaii quite a bit confusing (this is our car? no mandy and cott's car. no maybe grandma barbara's car.) and often frustrating (no jakie the cakie not awakie, mommy color with finny!) but also really thrilling (we go a beach, no maybe go a pool or no maybe take a rest and play trucks). Henry seems to think pacific time was working just fine for his schedule so why change it now and so wakes fully ready for the day at 3:30 am. And Jake is finding this onslaught of new people both fascinating (he sits enthralled in the playpen on the back porch slowly scooting in circles to watch finn lapping around him on his tricycle) and slightly traumatizing (the first time James went in to re-plug Jake with his pacifier in the middle of his nap, Jake screamed quite loudly in surprise--probably thinking this strange bearded man looked nothing like anyone he knew).
It's been a rocky first week for me too now that Mandy has officially flown overseas and James is working. Most days are purely reactionary, changing diapers, feeding and putting children down for naps when it becomes blatantly clear that full blown melt down is approaching or already arrived. And for the most part, I'm starting to work things out and settle in. But we still have our moments of total mayhem or hilarity or beauty and mostly combinations of all three:
Tonight when giving all three boys baths at once, Finn conked his head on the faucet and started to cry making Jake cry and both cried harder to outdo the other until both of them were screaming in sobbing gulps. Henry lay between them in the tub grinning from ear to ear.
There are few things more cruel to a toddler than the small space on the porch where a tricycle might almost but does not actually pass through and which allows him to enter and get wedged but then somehow shrinks, chinese handcuffs style to keep him from getting back out again and which requires an adult to pick him up and wrangle the trike out from between the couch and the wall only for him to try again and yes, get stuck in the same place to cry and scream in complete exasperation.
Between the swallows and squirming that qualify as feeding Jake his bottle, I propped him up to pat him on the back and had the lucky reward of projectile spit-up launching from his mouth, ricocheting off the side of the leather chair in his room and drenching my entire left side from ribs to mid calf. I plopped him down on the floor, sopped up the mess with a blanket and picked him up again finding his back thickly frosted with poop that had pushed its way out of his diaper and nearly up to his hairline--this all within ten minutes of the bath mentioned in the first point.
During a salutory cocktail party given for mandy by her lovely next door neighbors, I added another person to the list of likely faces I will see when floating towards the light of heaven. Ralph, the sixties-ish math proffesor who hosted the event, found Finn a plastic sippy cup from his store of grandkids paraphernalia, filled it with juice and herded him to the backyard with a fist full of fancy whole grain crackers and once the sustenance had settled, picked Finn up, turned the sprinklers on and dashed around the yard in a previously determined path that left them both miraculously dry and noticably exhilerated.
At this same cocktail party, the huddle of women gathered on the wicker settees discussing a number of topics, had the unfortunate collective urge to discuss all manner of Hawaiin pesks leaving me for a number of nights following, laying in bed fearing the biting centipedes known to show up in people's beds, the scuttling rats along the back walls of the yard and the stinging man-of-war jellyfish that often entangle the appendages of helpless swimmers on the beach at the end of the road. As is probably supposed to be forgivable about these types of conversations, all stories were supplemented with some sort of dissmissal like, "oh, just watch for the blue bubbles in the surf that come after the trade winds have passed, 2-14 days after the full moon, and otherwise, it's perfectly safe to swim" making me feel less comforted than confused.
In a spurt of energy uncharacteristic of the last two weeks in general, I waited for the perfect moment of the morning to pluck Finn from bed just as he started to wake up, changed him, dressed him and loaded him into the front seat of the stroller, moved on to Jake's room and repeated the process, snapping him in behind Finn and then with baby bjorn cinched to my chest, scooped Henry out of his closet bedroom, fanangled his limbs through the grace-less holes of the bjorn, misted us all in a cloud of spray sunscreen and walked the mile to the Safeway down the road to buy nothing less cliched than baby food. I sort of preened to see the number of people who gawked out their window in awe of me or perhaps dismay at my circus-y looking caravan in the high heat of hawaiin 10am. The walk home was long and hot and slightly more circus-y as I balanced an iced coffee and favored a developing blister from my plastic flip flops.
The other day, when James got Finn out of bed, our son took James' face in his hands and said, "daddy, are you sad?" and James said, "no, I'm not sad buddy" and then Finn said with alarming clarity about the really densely emotional landscape that made up Mandy's week long leave ending with another trip to the airport for an unknowable time of separation, "just Mandy and Cott and Jakie sad." James said, "yeah, Finn. Mandy and Scott and Jakie are sad."
I'm sad too.
T minus two days and we are wheels up to Hawaii. As I mentioned before, our furniture is gone so pretty much all that is left in our apartment are stacks of clothes to be packed and bizarre food items from the back of the cupboard left to be consumed before we leave. The boys seem to be adjusting mightily well. Finn enjoys the expansive carpet space to park his cars and trucks in broader lots of OCD organization and Henry really couldn't care less whether he is sleeping in a fancy crib or a blanket on the floor next to our air bed. It's been an interesting week:
Finn once again ran out of diapers before we realized it so while James scanned the aisle at Target for the smallest possible bag of diapers so we don't have to carry them with us to Hawaii, Finn went "nakie". We have been slowly introducing the idea of potty training but not wanting to start something in the middle of major transition (babywise peeps would be so proud of me), we have put off actual training until we get to Hawaii. Even so, Finn yelled over the women of the View this morning, "I need to pee", we ran into the downstairs bathroom, I hoisted him up to aiming level and he peed. I realize that for many of you who read this and do not have children, this is a sort of uncomfortable and unnecessary anecdote for me to be sharing. But for those of you with access to kids, this, you realize is a momentous moment that makes your heart swell with pride on a first words, first steps sort of level.
Using up the cupboard and fridge food makes for interesting meals. Monday, James made grilled cheese with the last bit of creamy tomato basil soup and supplemented with the final contents of a can of spaghetti sauce to make it go further. We've eaten kiwi with nearly every meal because I found an entire bag of them in the back of the fridge behind boxes of leftovers. And this morning Finn and I made pancakes with the last bit of mix in the box. We have about one table spoon of butter left and no syrup so feeling very martha stewart-y, I thought to sprinkle some powdered sugar on top for taste and aesthetic appeal. I keep the powdered sugar in an old ball canning jar and when I went to sprinkle, I dumped a huge pile on top of the pancakes that resembled a science fair rendition of Mount Hood. Finn promptly plunged both hands into the sugar and then clapped. This all took place during the nakie portion of the morning so wrapped in a towel, sitting on the counter, he covered us both in fine, sticky white powdered sugar and grinned from ear to ear.
Finn's language skills seem to grow with surprising speed and content these days. He often latches on to a word or phrase caught from some unknown origin and repeats it in every possible scenario to try it out. This week's phrases have included "ride it like a horse" and "backing up, backing up" as well as the Happy Birthday song sung in a monotonous zombie-ish voice that makes James and me laugh a little nervously, not sure if we should be entertained or disturbed.
I read the Babywise books one and two over the last couple of days because Mandy mentioned that their philosphy on baby-raising is most closely aligned with hers and Scott's sense of how they would like to parent Jake. But having already traversed the stages they talk about with two kids, I'm having some guilt that I didn't implement these strategies with my kids for their obvious health and emotional benefits. It's like reading the directions on a super-elaborate barbecue grill after you already assembled it willy nilly and turned the propane valve on, thinking, "wow it's a good thing nothing exploded."
I also read Anne Patchett's newest book Run and really loved it. I'd heard it wasn't so good and had even thought about taking my name off the waiting list at the library but then, as is my custom, I forgot about it and got an e-mail that it was waiting for me at the holds desk. Since I'd been something like #940 on the waiting list and I was already at the library picking up the Babywise books, I thought I might as well skim it. I was really pleasantly surprised. Anne Patchett has a way of making really unlikely situations very reasonable and accessible while still successfully making her prose full of lovely descriptions and unexpected connections--sort of the best of a romance novel, a political thriller and a naturalist's walk through the woods.
More once we get to Oahu....
These last few weeks have been a flurry of changes and decisions leading up to a monumentally exciting move to Hawaii. The accompanying emotions are mixed.
We are getting the chance to live in Hawaii rent free in a five bedroom house a stone's throw from one of the most beautiful beaches in the world for six months. James has gotten the Ok to work from home on Pacific time (5-2 in Hawaii) so we will be going to bed early, exploring the island, taking naps and watching for "LOST" stars. We'll pay off some lingering debt more quickly, save up for a newer car and live a life we might not ever get the chance to live. It's really an amazing opportunity that I think anyone would fanangle their lives to allow.
But the initiating reason for us going is that my sister Mandy--whose house it is and whose son I will be caring for--is getting deployed to Afghanistan and is in fact already in the middle of Texas in the middle of the hot season getting ready to be shipped out. Via Skype, she seems in relatively good spirits, resigned to this reality as part of the deal, but maybe slightly more crabby and less impressed with all that the military has done for her. Sitting here with Henry squawking beside me, I just can't really imagine.
As a part of this move, we are packing up our apartment, paring down our belongings once again-less than a year since we moved out of our house in Indiana and did the same thing. Good friends who have recently moved to the Portland area and had no attachment to their previous furniture have given ours a new home while we are away, an easy, free storage system that benefits all involved.
So our living room is a parking lot for finny's trucks and cars and the boxes that vary in stages of fullness. I mentioned before my inability to time the weaning process of food in our fridge before a vacation. I seem to be about as good at packing up a house without putting something ridiculously necessary like a warm sweater for each of the boys in cool Portland spring or spatulas in the bottom of a box not to be found again until the next arrival.
We sold our car to a lovely girl who bought it for a song for her sister, also a lovely girl who seemed a bit down on her luck. I felt good about giving her the keys. But as she drove away and the boys and I stood in the cold rain at a Fred Meyer on the northeast side of Portland, waiting for our ride, I got very nostalgic and sad. With all of its quirks (awful handling, bizarre dash lights constantly blinking on to betray a new chronic problem, electrical malfunction making the back windows and the sun roof unusable), we brought both of the boys home from the hospital in this car. It's come a long way with us.
This all sounds very negative considering the unbeatable situation we have been handed. I am really excited about this chapter for James and me and the boys-Jake and Scott included. I think I'm just focused right now on the leaving and not as much on the arriving. I can't quite see the forest yet for the trees.
If praying is something you do, I would ask for yours especially right now. For the details of leaving; for Mandy, Scott and Jake's comfort and relative ease in transition; for a smoothing over of all the possible difficulties of living in community, for safety, and I guess also for a respectful, effective end to these wars.
As usual, this reminds me of Eliot, "not farewell but fare forward"
Fare forward, travellers! Not escaping from the past
Into indifferent lives, or into any future;
You are not the same people who left that station
Or who will arrive at any terminus,
While the narrowing rails slide together behind you;
And on the deck of the drumming liner
Watching the furrow that widens behind you,
You shall not think 'the past is finished'
Or 'the future is before us'...
Here between the hither and the farther shore
While time is withdrawn, consider the future
And the past with an equal mind.
I picture the two of you very vividly as hippy parent inventor extraordinaires: well tanned and with lovely accents (you are Australian after all), athletically thin (you make jogging strollers) and bearing the characteristic idiosyncrasies of both the modern progressive parent and the self made business men that you are (this part I'm just conjecturing). And with this image in my mind--a sort of boyscout meets crocodile dundee meets metrosexual dad of three with a Subaru forrester and a compost pile sort of image--I write you this letter of appreciation believing that it means something to you to hear it.
I love your strollers. I mean really. I really love your strollers.
I fancy myself a progressive parent in my own right, but more of the garage sale-ing, taking mass transit, carrying a canvas tote everywhere I go kind of progressive (see here-less money than your typical granola mom) so your stroller, with its hefty price tag and slightly yuppy looking exterior would normally not appeal to me. But here's the thing, the whole design of the double stroller that converts so simply for varying children in different stages and does so with such minimal bulk is really just so very brilliant. So brilliant in fact that when I first saw one of your strollers on a clandestined day at a Borders in Beaverton, I chased the man down who was pushing it and bombarded him with questions as he hastily tried to find his wife and make his escape. I actually followed him through the store marveling at the apple green stroller with his two toddler aged sons riding comfortably double decker as their father swiveled and maneuvered between narrow bookshelves and dawdling customers. I dropped my books on a table near the door, waved my husband down and followed this man with the stroller out the front door to continue my interview.
The very next day, I went to the store of his direction and found the vary same Phil&Ted's stroller parked just inside the front door. A week later, after much rationalizing and some financial fanangling, we took our own green apple stroller home. As it would happen, we found the last stroller of a certain shipment from your lovely company that had been specially priced so that the double kit came free. It seemed like a good omen.
Ever since, I have pushed my stroller proudly to all manner of events and places, through airports and MAX stations, festivals and carnivals, on dirt and on grass and on pavement. And it has been worth every penny we paid for it and more. I live in a lovely city where it rains unforgivably often and as a newcomer, I know very few people. It would be very easy for me to stay home with my newborn and two-year-old sons and mournfully look out the drizzly windows. But with the initial motivation of making sure I got my money's worth and then for the continued joy of being outside and finding the trails and playgrounds in an ever-broadening radius from our house, we use it all the time.
I realize this sounds like hyperbole. And to some extent I know it is hyperbole. We would live quite effectively with a less lovely stroller and in fact would probably continue to breathe without a stroller at all. But my point is, your design is useful to my life. I walk more often: to buy groceries for dinner, to send a birthday present, to get coffee and then play at the park. And if walking more isn't progressive, than I don't know what is.
Thank you for the ingenious design of your double jogging stroller. I believe I am a better mom for its convenience and comfort.
Very best,
Kate Rohl
PS. While I appreciate the stroller's jogging capacity, I should disclaim that I have not yet utilized it for actual jogging.
PPS: Your company might want to think seriously about issuing me some sort of commission structure as I am easily persuaded into conversations with perfect strangers about the brilliance of your strollers and then a subsequent demonstration of its function. I have also introduced the stroller to entirely new markets visiting friends in both Indiana and Arizona where you, Phil&Ted are not nearly as well represented as you are here in cutting edge Portland.
Any of you that know my husband James might note in the first points of any description of him that he loves sports, I mean really loves sports. He would rather be watching an NBA basketball game than doing pretty much anything else in the world. And all other sports rank only slightly lower on his list of priorities. Give him a remote, he can find a sporting event. Leave him at home with the boys and our cable-less TV, he will stream the most interesting game available online. Give him a ball he will kick it. And give him an unknown person, he will find their unique sports passion so that he can talk to them about it- seriously.
And since the NBA playoffs are upon us (really the height of the height of his favorite thing), all conversations lead to some excited description of an elaborate play at the end of the game or a player's comments to some obscure journalist or a backwoods obsessive blogger's theory about the weaknesses of the triangle offense or the LA Times' most recent editorial about Kobe or...you get the idea. He is single minded.
For those of you who do not know my husband James particularly well, he is an excellent conversationalist. He finds not only your sports loyalties but your other passions as well. He can talk about urban development, tonka trucks or literary analysis of the modern American novel with equal candor and knowledge. He will find the subject that uniquely provides an overlap of interest.
Not so during the NBA playoffs. Or maybe its just me. Maybe he just feels the need to be polite to other people and talk about other things than the most important thing of all time, the Lakers playoff run. And so he comes home and just must talk to me about the burning questions of matchups and defensive strategy. Maybe he spends all of the alloted time and energy he has for other subjects at work. But around here, we are like a one man NBA TV-all basketball, all the time. And here is where my grievance with ESPN and really all sports media comes in. There are a number of bloggers and sports writers and pundits and hosts who love sports as much as James. They live sports. They know all the stats and subtleties of players and plays, they call coaches by their first names and refer to the playoffs of '88 or the obscure off season scrimmage between D-league rookies. They make podcasts with their other fanatic fan friends to talk about all sporting subjects. And in their broadcasted sports obsession, it validates James' personal sports obsession-he has camaraderie in this shared knowledge and passion. There are others who care as much as he does.
But there is a difference between James and them, a key, important difference. They get paid to know everything there is to know about sports. James does not. And when James knows as much as the people whose whole full time job is to know these things, well, it makes me wonder. Maybe James loves sports more than they do because he doesn't have to. Maybe these sports professionals with their intern researchers and their whole weekday schedule make it tough on us middle-american housewives whose husbands must read and know all that is offered. Maybe someone would pay James to spend his whole day loving sports. Maybe it's just May and the Lakers are in the playoffs.
Yes you read that right. I always thought that growing older and bringing children into the world might make me instantaneously more dependable, as if the hormones involved with childbirth might also bring about a sort of supernatural sense of parental weight-that I am now responsible for other human beings and so should be able to remember commitments and shot records and keep fruit cups in ready supply. Not so-in all of those examples actually.
I think I have come to terms with my youngest child-I'm pretty fun to be around-but don't count on me to make the reservations or arrive on time-kind of irresponsibility. And in most cases, I have surrounded myself with people (husband, friends, sisters, coworkers) who are generally more capable and so make up for my lack. But there are moments-and this week has been full of them-where I really cringe at my own space-cadet-ism. For instance:
At various points this week, both Henry and Finn have been down to two or less diapers and because the realization of this shortage came at inconvenient times (ie other child down for nap, in the middle of the night, generally feeling lazy, etc) instead of immediately running out to the store, I improvised other means. Not like swaddling them in a towel for days or anything but Henry has certainly worn finn's diapers once or twice in his life, cinched around his armpits for optimal fit and for Finn, we have dipped into the size six diapers that Bing accidentally bought, which I believe are large enough to fit most adults. Must work on keeping track of number of diapers left in package.
We are leaving on vacation this coming week and in an attempt to be responsible, I have been carefully avoiding perishable food that can sit in our refrigerator and rot while we are gone. However, it seems that this weaning process has taken its course a bit sooner than I expected and now, three whole days before we leave, we have bare cupboards and a fridge consisting of two containers of yogurt that stains Finn's lips a sort of frightening bright blue, a dribble of milk, a jug of iced coffee (not practical for children's consumption) and various kinds of cheese. Needless to say, yesterday in total exasperation at our food situation, we walked to Fred Meyer, bought corn dogs from the deli and ate them ravenously on the way to the playground across the street.
And the real clincher to my general reflective cringing came this past Monday when after napping the full amount of time that Finn would allow, I checked my e-mail and had a message from two dear friends with whom I was supposed to meet for lunch that said something like, "um well, we've been sitting at the agreed upon cafe for almost an hour and you aren't here. so I hope all is well and you just forgot..." The more awful thing is that these friends live far away, they have a 3 1/2 year-old son who I have not met-it has been so long since I have seen them. And I really care what they think of me. They are intelligent, caring people who I owe quite a bit of academic and spiritual clarity to. And I stood them up because I forgot and I took a nap.
This all, in combination, has made me feel quite bad about myself this week. I keep picturing Finn's friends' mothers in kindergarten issuing bans on my involvement in the PTA or carpools because I have been known to leave children waiting on the sidewalk at school for a number of hours or harriedly dumping chips ahoy on a plate for the bake sale. But the one consolation I can find is that I do manage to keep my children alive-pretty successfully actually. They mostly eat well and healthily with an occasional corndog, they are usually clean unless they have recently rolled around in mulch at the playground or eaten strawberries. And they seem happy. Really. I mean you should see them. If you didn't know me, you might think I am doing quite swimmingly. And while I am actively working on being more dependable (I see an elaborate internet calendar in my future that sends reminders through every technological method available), I think this sort of spaciness comes with the package. You might not like me quite so much if my datebook and I were better friends. I might give you a dirty look when you showed up late for our coffee date. As it is, you will always beat me there, always have well portioned snacks in your bag for your antsy children, and you will probably have to spot me a ten once in a while when I realize I left my debit card in the back pocket of my other jeans. I'm working on it; I'm not there yet.