Fussypants asked what makes us happy or what we are grateful for. I’m happy right now and incredibly grateful for my life because:

1. My kids are awesome,
2. my husband is awesome,
3. my job is great,
4. my friends are awesome,
5. and, finally, I love my neighborhood, yard and (with reservations) house.

Because I feel so content right now, I’ve taken to worrying that it can’t possibly stay this good:

1. I’ve got four years until the teen years.  Four years of bliss.
2. John and I are happy.  No worries.
3. The job will go away in a couple years when my dad retires.  I’m trying to do what I can prevent this from being catastrophic for our family.  Then again, the change would involve less activities for the kids, as the money outlay for that part of our budget is a little steep.  And yet?  They would be the same awesome kids whether or not they take piano, gymnastics, soccer, dance and so on.
4. My friends are the best bunch of women.  No worries.
5. Ah - the biggie.  The thing John and I struggle with the most.  We are happy.  Our lives are great.  If we or our kids really want to do something, we can afford to do it because we are basically living below our means.  We love our neighborhood and our schools.  We have a great backyard with plenty of room to play.  But.  We only have two bedrooms and with five people living in the house, things are getting squishy.

People are amazed when they hear we only have two bedrooms but the house is actually not so small - we have lots of living space, just not lots of bedrooms.  It has been fine for the past 10 years (our first house was a 2 bedroom-er too), during which we have added three kids to the set up, and yet each time we have just consolidated, shifted and organized to make room.

As the kids get older, though, we keep coming to the conclusion that we need more bedrooms and I am so worried that doing this will mess up my balanced life.

So all that is to say that I am exquisitely happy and grateful for my life right now and yet I can’t help but worry about the future because things can’t stay the same without one of us going completely crazy.  Or five of us.

How, as a mother, do you juggle the need to allow your child to work out her own problems and learn life’s lessons with the incredible urge to march out on the mat and kick some little brat’s ass?

That is the question I struggled with last night.

Mare is a great kid. Moms love having her over for play dates because they always go well. She is a fun friend and super easy for the parent. She is compliant and pretty much willing to do what her friends want to do in order to have fun with them.

Ok, so truth be told, that last sentence has always worried me (middle school isn’t that far off…) And we have already had instances where her willingness to go along with a friend has gotten her in trouble. What I have come to realize, though, is this quality is what is going to play a roll in determining her future friends. There are girls she wants to be friends with but who are just too strong-willed for her. They need a friend who can stand up to them, and Mare doesn’t. On the other hand, Mare has never been drawn to meek girls. In any situation, she spends a lot of time observing the other girls and determining who she wants to befriend - and it is usually the most vibrant one in the room. And then? She walks right over does it. She has confidence out the wazoo.

So I’m sitting in the stands last night at gymnastics, watching Mare go through the drills. She is loving it, as always, though she tends to spend a little too much time looking around at the other gymnasts (there are lots of vibrant gymnasts.) Another girl (Gigi) in her group is obviously a little better than the rest. But man is she pushy, I notice. If she isn’t first in line, she cuts and makes herself first. Ok, whatever. I’m just glad mine doesn’t act like that. But then Gigi realizes that Mare is a bit of a pushover. That Mare is looking around and not carefully guarding her place in line. That she had an opportunity to get a few extra vaults in. And so, after doing her vault, she comes around to the line and gets in front of Mare. Mare tries to reclaim her spot but is pushed out of the way. And then the girl who had been behind Gigi cuts in front of Mare because she had been behind Gigi and she was staying behind Gigi. And this continued with the rest of the girls and when Gigi came around again? She pushed Mare out of the way once again. Mare wasn’t able to do another vault. I seriously thought my head was going to explode as I watched this. The vapid coach didn’t notice. The other parents weren’t concerned. And I was almost in tears due to the injustice of it all. Not because I cared how many vaults Mare got to do, but because she was getting pushed around and I couldn’t do anything to help her.

Or could I have? Should I have marched out there and had a talk with the coach? I knew this wasn’t the right thing to do but it hurt not to. After the vault they went over to get a drink and Gigi pushed Mare out of the way and I watched as four more little girls did the same thing. Mare finally walked to the back of the line and was last to get her drink and her mother almost started crying watching it all.

Can I just say right here that I would have been on that mat in a heartbeat if it were my daughter that was doing the bullying? I knew who Gigi’s mother was because Gigi kept looking at her. She was there. Watching the whole thing. And? She didn’t care. Shudder.

After class we went out for dinner and I talked to Mare about it a little. I told her that it wasn’t right what those girls were doing but I was proud of the way she handled it (no whining, no tattling.) And I was also proud of her cartwheels and beam work and blah blah blah.

Should I have told Mare to push back? Obviously no, but was there a solution? I don’t want her to get bullied, but I also don’t want her to get into a tattling habit.

What I did do, though, was imprint Gigi’s cute little face into my mind. Mare will never be in a gymnastics class with her again.

Chip loves Star Wars. Whether or not this is an appropriate movie for a two year old is beside the point, I’ve been told. John loves it too, and that is what counts. Right?

And yeah, I am SO eating my words right now. I am well aware that I have been complaining all over the place about Chip turning everything into a gun. I lamented about how he doesn’t watch anything but PBS, so how could he even know what a gun is? Like, it must be those other boys from the pool!

Karma sucks.

So, John and I are messaging today:

Sara: What did you rent at Blockbuster?

John: Chip and I watched Star Wars. He loves it.

Sara: Uh… (thinking WTF?)

John: (unaware of his wife’s stupor over his choice of viewing material for her baby boy…) There’s this part where a bounty hunter tries to assasinate Princess Amidala by letting poisonous millipedes into her room.

Sara: … (again thinking WTF?)

John: Chip looks at me and says….That’s gerstusting!

Last week my mom called me, wondering if the kids would like to go on a short train ride. She proposed leaving from our city’s train station and riding westward to the next stop, approximately 50 minutes away. We would then eat dinner, walk around and get on the next eastward bound train (3 hours later.) I informed her that the kids would love this. In fact, John and I decided to go as well as it sounded like a blast. My mom bought tickets for Wednesday.

Tuesday night, I came home from a walk at 9:00 pm to find Chip on fire with a temperature of 101.6. Shit.

My mom came over Wednesday morning to take the girls to swim team so that Emmy wouldn’t have to put Chip in the car, and the poor baby became hysterical, thinking Grandma was taking the girls on the train with out him.

By Wednesday afternoon, it was down to 99.5 and we decided to dose him up on Tylenol and take our chances or risk a trip to the hospital for a broken heart.

We arrived at the Kirkwood Train Station at 4:00 pm

which gave us just enough time to get a frozen custard at the stand next door.

While we waited at the station, we explored the model train and train station displays

and signed the guest book

until the train arrived. I can promise you, I don’t know if I have ever seen my kids so excited. Chip squealed in delight when I stopped him mid-chatter and had him listen for the distant train whistle, announcing its eminent arrival.

We boarded

and settled in for a terribly exciting ride through Missouri

which included bridges, cliffs, tunnels, rivers and a trip to the snack bar (which required walking between car trains - a perilous adventure for the kids.)

Upon arrival in Washington, we found one store still open at 5:30 pm - the Hobby Shop, and bought Chip a balsa glider plane. Then we found a drugstore still open and were able to locate the clearance rack which just so happened to have a couple souvenirs on them - a thimble for Mare and a plate for Bird, both priced at $1. We headed over to Cowan’s Cafe, the oldest restaurant in town, which, truth be told, left a little to be desired. Though the chocolate peanut butter pie at the end did improve my overall impression.

Looking at our watches, we realized we still had 2 hours until the train left. All-righty then.

We headed down to the riverfront and snapped some photos of the girls standing in front of the swollen Missouri River.

The photo above doesn’t do the river justice. That water was moving fast. I always forget how powerful the rivers are until I get up close and personal, especially during a time of flooding.

At 8:00 pm, we headed back to the Washington train station to wait for the eastbound train. And wait we did. And then? We waited some more. Finally, at over an hour late, the train pulled in and six very tired tourists climbed aboard for, what felt like, a quick ride back to Kirkwood.

I’ll pay the price today - the kids will be exhausted. But it was so worth it.

Bird and Mare have a pretty typical relationship, I think. In summary:

If sisters were free to express how they really feel, parents would hear this: “Give me all the attention and all the toys and send Rebecca to live with Grandma.” ~Linda Sunshine

Except then they would be jealous that she got to go to Grandma’s by herself.

Every night I give the girls a hug and a kiss for each year that I have known them. We end it with one to grow on and a quick recap of what they did that day to make me proud of them. Or not - sometimes it’s a conversation about how tomorrow will be better. Lately they have been whining about how I gave one or the other more “mommy time”. Apparently, I should be bringing a stopwatch in with me and timing the interaction to ensure complete fairness.

I would like more sisters, that the taking out of one, might not leave such stillness. ~Emily Dickinson

Bird has been so much better since school let out. She is, truly, a different child. And yet, she still has her moments, with Mare bearing the brunt of those times.

Big sisters are the crab grass in the lawn of life. ~Charles M. Schulz

Even so, Mare’s philosophy has been pretty close to this:

I know my older sister loves me because she gives me all her old clothes and has to go out and buy new ones. ~Author unknown, attributed to a 4-year-old named Lauren

Though, Mare is starting to lose that sweet innocence. She is becoming wise to her sister’s injustices. And, as I have said before, she is excellent at playing the victim when in fact she is the perpetrator.

More than Santa Claus, your sister knows when you’ve been bad and good. ~Linda Sunshine

I don’t know who Linda Sunshine is, but I’m thinking she had a lot of sisters.  Heck, who am I kidding - she only needed one.

So at last night’s swim meet, my heart melted when Mare told me that she was very nervous before her first race, but having Bird sit right behind her in the bullpen gave her the confidence to do the race.

Sisters function as safety nets in a chaotic world simply by being there for each other. ~Carol Saline

Overall, I think Mare and Bird are close and I hope their friendship withstands the years to come. And even if it takes a break for a couple years, I know from my own experience that it most likely will return.

Sisters is probably the most competitive relationship within the family, but once the sisters are grown, it becomes the strongest relationship. ~Margaret Mead

That is what I have spent the last year doing.  Waiting for Chip to start that magical thing called pretend play.  It hasn’t happened and, seeing as he is about to turn three, I’m wondering if it ever will.  I’ve posted about this before, right?

Starting at 18 months, Bird and Mare both started sitting down for increasingly lengthy sessions of pretend, usually involving Little People the first year and eventually evolving to more sophisticated props such as stuffed animals, paper dolls and, of course, Polly Pockets.

At almost three, the only type of pretend Chip does is turning every longish type thing we have in the house into a gun and shooting us.  Off the top of my head, I recall him turning a half-eaten bagel, a flash light and his foot into a gun.  If they aren’t guns, then they are beating sticks which he uses to dent things like my refrigerator, the wall and, at times, peoples’ heads.  Other than that, he has no interest in pretend.  For the most part, I should add.  Sure, there are times when he’ll make something talk to something else.  Briefly.  It never lasts for more than a minute and it usually requires a participant (like mom).  At this age, the girls were happily occupying themselves with the world of Little People for hours.

The result is that I haven’t scrap booked in at least a year.  Plus, every thing I do around the house involves my little helper who still believes that he, and only he, should be responsible for the Tide going into the washing machine.

Then again, having my little guy around me all the time isn’t so bad.  When I get a smile like this:

I think, man, woman you need to just relax a little and enjoy this time.

As we were going to bed on Sunday, John told me that it had been the best Father’s Day ever.

Yeah, he was right.

I kicked it off by making baked french toast and bacon for breakfast. Due to a party I went to at the pool the night before (which involved many adult beverages and where, amazingly enough, I managed to not put my foot in my mouth, even once), I had not prepared the french toast the night before so it was a little crusty but still good.

After breakfast, we decided to take a bike ride. We thought it would be fun to ride to the farmer’s market, though it is a pretty good distance to bike for the kids. Bird was in a crappy mood from having stayed up too late on Friday and Saturday nights, but the bribe of a shaved ice kept her going. Mare, too, was in tears a couple times. She is riding great, but is still scared easily by near-miss-falls.

When we got there, we had 30 minutes to wait until Tropical Moose opened, so we sat under the pergola and relaxed while the kids explored. I bought a pint of strawberries to eat while we waited; good stuff.

At noon, we got our shaved ices - something I haven’t had in years - and we had a great time slurping them up, tasting each other’s selections and attempting to avoid ice headaches. With a lot of sugar in our system, we rode back home in much better spirits. We stopped at one of our favorite parks on the way home and let the kids play for a while.

Everyone was exhausted after the ride, so we hung around the house in the afternoon. The lawn needed to be mowed, but I didn’t say anything. Since it was Father’s Day and all.

My parents were taking everyone to their club for dinner at 5:30, so we headed to their house at 4:30 to give my dad his gifts. The kids love going to the grandma’s house; it warms my soul as I never had that growing up.

Dinner was so incredibly awesome. The club set out a salad bar buffet that had the most amazing choices. For dinner, my sister ordered Tuna Steak, but the rest of the adults had turf. It was quite possibly the best beef I have ever had.

After dinner we all jumped in golf carts and drove around the course, which was beautiful. Chip rode between my mom and I, John let Bird drive their cart and Mare steered while my dad manned the gas/brake and kept an eye on her steering. The evening was cool, making the ride very pleasant. We stopped at the ponds to look for frogs and turtles. John threw a rock in and splattered Chip and I with algae. Ahem. I explained the game of golf to Chip and he wanted to *see* the cup that the ball goes into, so we stopped at several greens. He took the flag out of the cup and got down on his hands and knees to examine the set up.

On the way home from the Club, we stopped off at Lone Elk Park where we saw all the animals you hope to see when you visit: bucks and does, elk, bison and, the kids pointed out, squirrels. Don’t forget the squirrels, mom.

Hmmm. Yeah, honey, it was a good day. You deserve it.

I love you.

I forgot to mention that before I started stressing about the recital yesterday, the girls and I made homemade oreo cookies while Chip napped.  Oh.my.goodness.

So, so good.  Mare even deemed them better than chocolate chip cookies.

PS:  While the original recipe comes from Smitten Kitchen, her pages seems to be screwey - all those weird symbols are actually “1″s.  But if you don’t want to deal with worrying about that, head on over here for a more normal-looking copy of the recipe.

Bird’s dance recital was last night - the last of the lingering commitments.  Not that we don’t have anywhere to be this summer, but they are summer commitments - swim team, camp, etc.  This was a leftover from the school year and I’m glad to close that book, finally.

Bird was beyond thrilled with the whole thing.  It really galvanized her enthusiasm for dance so that now she is actually looking forward to the Nutcracker Camp I signed her up for.  This is good.  I don’t like wasting my money.

I was frazzled getting her there.  First off, I couldn’t find the tickets.  Screw it, I thought, I’m going and they will let all five of us in because I’ll through a hissy if they don’t they know I’m honest (they did.)  On the way there, I actually drove two miles past the exit on the highway before realizing it.  An exit I take all the time I might add.  We turned around, got to the venue and raced upstairs (running a little behind due to the frantic search for the tickets and slight detour on the highway) and I threw her costume on her, touched up her makeup, gave her a hug and kiss, grabbed Chip and Mare’s hands and ran downstairs to get decent seats and wait for John and my parents to arrive.

Remember that tornado reference I made a post or two back?  Perfect description.

In retrospect, I should have let Mare and Chip ride with the grandparents.  Heck, for that matter, I should have hired a babysitter.

The show started at 6:00.  We didn’t get out until 9:00.  And amazingly enough, Chip sat, fairly well, through the whole thing.  Yeah - he wiggled, he danced, he kicked some seats.  And we broke the no-eating-in-the-auditorium rule big time (I actually had a lunch box filled with summer sausage, cheese, bread, grapes and bottled water and a purse stuffed with a bag of Cheese Its.)  But for the most part, Chip did a great job.

But still.  Next year?  I’ll hire a babysitter.

So, you can’t write a post like this and then not take action, right?

Action List

1. I have cut way back on my food intake and I went running Monday and Tuesday nights. I hope to continue this for the rest of the summer. I’m not weighing myself until my clothes feel looser, because I don’t want to get discouraged.
2. I got my hair cut in a different style. I thought I hated it all day yesterday, but this morning I styled it my way (those pros never do it right) and now I’m very pleased. He colored it as well and though I’m not as enamored with his color choice as I am with his cut, it is different, and that is what I wanted.
3. My face is still broken out - I don’t think there is anything I can do about it until Chip weans, though. At that point, I’ll go the Acutane route. Until then, I wear make up everywhere.
4. I’ve been making an effort to be a little hipper each day. Of course, last night I went to Walmart in a pair of crappy, stretched out running shorts, a tank top and no make up (hello new zit on my nose!) Plus, my hair looked like crap from the stylist’s efforts. Then again, it was Walmart.
5. I haven’t been gossipy. Though maybe that is just because there hasn’t been anything going on. But whatever. It is a habit.

I feel better.