Optimism At Work and Play

I actually own rose colored glasses, and they seriously do make everything look better!  That's no cheesy cliche.  If you ever have a chance to try a pair, do so.  I bought mine as custom made prescription sunglasses, so I can't recommend any particular pair for you.  I will say that they were worth every penny and when they die, I shall spend every last bit as much to get another pair made.  The only disappointing part is that sometimes I will see something beautiful and when I take them off to look at it again, that same thing is kinda blah.  They "pretty up" your surroundings.  We ALL should own rose colored glasses.

Where am I going with this?  I am aiming for optimism.  Not just "wishing for things to turn out well in the future" but also "seeing things now in a more positive light".  It's difficult to maintain the second one, but if you incorporate a smidgen of humor you can achieve optimism at any time.  Let me give you an example:

This was the sight I walked into one morning at a customer's house.   This person has a one year old puppy and the first day that he decided to leave the dog out of his crate, major damage occurred.  A blue pen was destroyed on the off white carpet, the recyclables were un-recycled (not a word) and slobberfied (another non-word), the morning coffee grinds were eaten and....the worst offense in the world of men....the remotes were chewn.

Listen, I know "chewn" is not a real word either, but Justin came up with it years ago and it just feels right when talking about things our pets destroy with their teeth.  He came to me once holding a clock radio with the cord sliced in half by our rabbit and declared, "No more! I'm gonna kill him!  Look!  It's totally chewn!" On the other hand, this happened many times and Justin now the king of wire splicing due to all of that practice fixing our electronics.  See how that optimism works??!!

Back to the doggie destruction.  That photo is only one corner of the damage.  There was a lot more.  I was tired and crabby and in no mood to deal with more work than I planned on for the day.  However, I stopped for a moment and thought about my dearly departed dog Shiminute.  He was the master of destruction.  We once had a situation so bad that we referred to the event as "The 14 Points of Shiminuian Destruction".  So many things were eaten and "processed" that we couldn't tell if it was poop or the chocolate cake he tore into that was on our walls.  That story is 15 years old and we STILL tell it.  NOW we laugh.  The only thing missing was photo documentation.

I looked around me and smiled and said, "I'm gonna take pictures of this so he will be able to have evidence when he tells this story years from now."  Optimism. I took a ton of them!  And I told my customer how he would appreciate them some day too.  I know because I have another customer whose Christmas Tree was dismantled and dragged down a flight of stairs the first time she left her dog out of the crate for a few hours.  I didn't think of taking pictures until I dragged it back up stairs and propped that half naked tree back up in the stand.  We both wish that I had thought of the camera a bit sooner that day!

So, when I hear stories about children who have been potty trained way before Allie, or who started speaking far earlier than she did, or began walking when she was still hanging out on the floor, I stop myself from comparing and feeling as if there's something wrong with either me or my child.  Instead I bust out my optimism. "Thank God she has her father all day and doesn't need to be potty trained in order to go to preschool. She can do it when she's ready."  "She'll have plenty of time to talk.  My mother still talks about being careful what I wish for because I never shut up once I started."  "Once she starts walking she's going to be all over the place so let's enjoy being able to catch her without breaking a sweat for now."

The last time I checked, the high school didn't have many 15 year olds who preferred wearing diapers, babbled only in baby language, and crawled to class.  She'll be just fine!  So fine that she runs all over the place, talks constantly (my mother warned me!) and tells us so frequently that she wants to hang out on the "big girl potty" that we are considering installing a refrigerator and recliner in both bathrooms so we don't have to sit on the floor while starving for so many hours during the day.

Speaking of which, Allie got another big girl potty from the Easter Bunny (a/k/a Grandma)  She loves it so much.  I have no idea what her obsession is with putting these things over her face.  She made BOTH of us join her in the potty celebration this time.

The optimistic side of this particular situation is three-fold:
1- She will NEVER put these things on her head again once her little
tiny tushy touches them for their intended purpose.  Ewww.
2- She loves the idea of using the potty so much that she wishes she could wear one.  I'm confident this idea will not continue much longer since we will NEVER let her leave our home wearing it as an accessory.
3- She loves us so much that she wants us to join her in her little potty seat jubilee.  Girlfriend loves a party!

My Husband Is A (Messy) Genius

And I am a moron in the making.  Apparently there is something called the Messy Genius/Messy Desk Theory that claims that sloppy people are motivated by achievement.  So, I ask you, does this look like someone who you would use the words "motivated" and "achieving" when describing?  Well, the theory says he is.
(Disclaimer: I would like to add that I love my husband very much and that he has other magnificent attributes that seriously outweigh his sloppiness, therefore I would like a pass on this one)

Genius and Protege

At the time of this photo, I had my own little farm of sorts.  My "calf and bull" were in a cage in the living room because he had back surgery and wasn't supposed to be chasing a little one around the house.  It kept her (and their messes) contained until I returned.  This particular evening, I left for an appointment and tidied up the entire pasture / play area before going.  I came home an hour and a half later and this is what I saw.  I promise you that my initial reaction was not, "What a genius!"  It was more like "WTF?!" 

Another fine demonstration my husband's extreme intelligence would be the use of Allie's hamper!

Exhibit A

Notice the cute Winnie the Pooh hamper.  It is approximately 6 feet from the area where we change Allie's clothes.  It's also right next to the door, so you pass it when you walk in and out of her room.  If you look closely, you will see pajamas on top of the cloth cover.  On top.  Why?  Well, I wish I could give you an answer for that, but I CAN'T.  Ole Einstein here knows it's ridiculous.  HE can't even tell me why the clothes are on the hamper, rather than in the hamper. 

He laughs a little at himself, actually.  It's right up there with Man Looking (see next paragraph).  He knows it's inexplicable, and he finds humor in the fact that he is one step closer to becoming a "typical male".  I'm guessing that he's far too busy pondering the meaning of life, developing a cure for cancer, and trying to find a way to bring Pluto back into our solar system to be bothered with the little things like being tidy.

Let me touch on Man Looking for a moment as I believe it too must be connected to higher intelligence.  (I have accepted this way of thinking because it's far more flattering for my husband than the alternative....that he may suffer from a majorcase of The Lazies.)  How many times have you heard, "Where's the (insert word here)?  I can't find it!"  You know that the item in question is in the obvious location, so you shout it out.  Then you hear, "No, it's not.  I looked."

Oh, no you didn't.  We all know you didn't REALLY look.

At this point, I ask the safety question....the question that will keep me from being super agitated that I have to get up and find something unless he can honestly answer "Yes, I did." The safety question is: "Did you really look or did you MAN look??!!"

I don't want to make you all jealous, but I was blessed with a husband who willingly admits to being wrong when he is.  It's so nice to not have to waste time debating who is right and wrong when one of us is CLEARLY wrong.  Suck it up, admit your wrong, and save all of us the time of arguing about the obvious.  (This should go both ways....it's not just for men.)  With that being said, I know the answer to my previous question by either the silence I hear as he goes back to search again OR he'll shout out, "I LOOKED!"

You and I both know that even after "look looking", we will go to the location of mystery, find the missing item in under 10 seconds, and hand it to him with that look that says, "Yeah right.  You really looked.  How did you survive before I came into your life? Here ya go, jackass" before walking away.  It's all part of Man Looking.  This is directly related to the Messy Genius theory as I believe it's a symptom of having those kinds of smarts.

All of this kind of makes me wonder..... if I'm resisting messiness, what does that say about my intelligence?  Am I fighting aptitude? The Messy Desk Theory says that brilliant people struggle with organization.  So, if I'm aiming for an orderly lifestyle, does this mean I'm an imbecile?  Are my efforts futile? Am I better off becoming a slob???  

Easter Eggs-travaganzas and Theories

Cleo Louise and her offspring offering

I'm going to blow your mind with my nuttiness this evening.  I know this because when I was thinking the thoughts that I'm going to write about, I got all freaked out and thought, 'This is too much....this blows my mind.  I've gotta write about this!'  Okay...are you ready?

Oh, wait.  First, this lovely red head in the photo is Cleo Louise, our Eclectus.  This morning, just before our Easter Egg Hunt at Mom's (a/k/a Nana), Cleo popped out an egg of her own to contribute to the celebration.  The timing was quite coincidental.  We were literally putting on our coats to leave when she presented us with this lovely item.  When I looked at this photo tonight, it triggered a whole cluster of thoughts that brought me to the "mind blowing" concept I mentioned above.  So, back to that...

If you are female, I want you to consider the possibility that you've already existed for hundreds or thousands of years.  (Yes, please.... DO go back and read it again to make sure you read that right before I expand on this theory).  I looked at Allie this evening as we crawled into bed and realized that she is from an egg inside of my body.  As women, we are born with all of our eggs already stockpiled in our girlie parts and ready to go the minute that puberty strikes, right?  So, when I was born, the Allie egg was already there!  And when my mother was born, the Vicki egg was     already there....which carried all of the DNA and whatnot that was the Allie egg.  So, we are like those little Russian Nesting Dolls!  One inside of another inside of another inside of another, all waiting to come out of the previous one and be discovered!  Tell me...am I wrong??  Is this not a concept of mind blowing proportions??

Mind you, this whole theory gets a little wacky when you add the male component.  Men create sperm as they go along in life, so you really have to reach to find the Russian Nesting Doll theory in action. And truth be told, my mind started hurting, and I kept going back to the mothers, and I couldn't turn the fathers and sons into nesting dolls in my heads.  It started getting wacky and they became GI Joes....never mind.

The Easter Egg scientists hard at work

Hey...Happy Resurrection Day! To make things a little more light and airy, I thought I would touch on the Easter festivities here.  We colored eggs for the first time with Allie.  Justin said he can't remember doing it but knows it happened at least once as a child.  It was kind of fun bossing them around and watching them anticipate how this was going to work out.  To be honest, I almost forgot to do it at all this year.  I guess I get consumed by work and the insanity of the Spring Break rush that I don't really THINK about the Momness that I am responsible for.  As soon as I remembered, I dashed to Target and started collecting all of the items necessary to create a nifty basket for a 2.5 year old and to decorate eggs.   I want Allie to have all of the traditions that I shared with my Mom (and sometimes my Dad too....Allie really hit the lottery in the Dad department, thank God).  I want to recreate all of the memories that each holiday conjures up for me.....so she can have those memories too.  Good times, people.  Good times.

Our little ray of sunshine and her done dozen

One last egg related thought for the evening.... I learned that I need to start hanging around with people with children if I want to know what's going on outside of our nice little family bubble that I've been living in.  A few days before Easter my mother called and asked if I was taking Allie to an egg hunt.  "Huh?  What?  I, uh, ummm, crap!  I didn't even THINK about an Easter egg hunt.  They do those here?!"  Again, I was caught up in the work cloud and was out of the kid loop.  I've discovered that they do many egg hunts around here.  The thing is that you have to belong to a church, read the local newspaper, actually speak to people who have children (or even the savvy ones who don't have children!), look up from your cart at the supermarket, show an interest in your community, etc. to find out where they are having an egg hunt.  I found one the day before it was happening and it was conveniently scheduled smack dab in the middle of my morning appointments.  (Side note: Does everything in this town have to start at 10am?  Can we aim for a smidgen later every now and then?)  

At that moment, I felt like a failure as a mother, but my own mom was there to pull my Easter out of the crapper.  "Well, now you know for next year.  Don't beat yourself up over it. We will have one of our own for her."  And we did.  And she loved it.  When it was over, she wanted to go back outside and look for more eggs, even though we told her there weren't any more.  It was the first Easter Egg Hunt I can remember in my entire life.  Mom does a fabulous job of creating a private egg hunt extravaganza.

The moral of this story is that I need to find fellow moms and spend time with them so I can learn about these Momisms in advance.  I am preparing to do so at a local play group this week.  Oh yes, I am taking action immediately.  I'm oddly nervous.  Wish me luck.  I'll let you now how it goes.

Kids and Pets.... BFFs With (Learning) Benefits

These are my two favorite girls.  If you ask Allie who Sadie is, she will tell you, "Sadie....best friend whole world!"  Sadie, I imagine, does not share the same views, but she's a dog so there's no knowing for sure.  If I were to guess, I would say that Sadie's response would be, "Allie....small human who scares the crap out of me but the big humans praise me big time for tolerating her so I do."

Sadie is our large border collie that Justin and I adopted 4 months after we started dating.  We traveled to North Shore Animal League in Port Washington, NY during rush hour on a friday to find her because my beloved dog, Shiminute, who had passed away sent a message to me to go there to find my next dog.  I know, I know....it all sounds a little kooky, but it's a true story.  Shim gave me Sadie.

Sadie was 6 months old, had been returned to a shelter three times, and was at risk of losing her life if she didn't find her forever home.  She wasn't even "on display".  (Note: if you can ever go to the main location, GO!  Its an amazing experience and so impressive how they help you find the pet that's right for you, while making sure that YOU are right for the pet.)  After spending time with a number of great dogs, I got this feeling that what I was looking for was hidden.  I asked one of the girls if they had "a long haired, bigger dog" somewhere.  They did.  She had been spayed earlier that day and was in recovery.  I asked to see her and when they brought her out, I just cried while I petted her as she leaned against me.  FOUND HER!

They wanted us to come back to get her another day and I told them there was no chance I was making that trek back there and I wasn't leaving without her.  They gave us literature to read about why some people SHOULDN'T own a border collie.  Then they called references at 8pm to make sure we were worthy.  It was a big to-do, I tell ya.  But we survived and left with Sprinkles a/k/a Sadie.    Our first girl.  She had pneumonia and she was fearful, but she was perfect.  Everyone sees how special she is.  Especially Allie!

Here's my thing.  Im an animal person.  I have 2 dogs, a cat, a parrot and a rabbit.  I work with animals all day.  I've been fortunate enough to know people who have shared valuable information with me in regards to behavior and animal care.  And I know that no animal should be trusted 100% with a child.  NONE.

If you think you have the exception to this rule in your life, I ask that you just pretend like you dont.  Animals are unpredictable.  They have adjusted to our world and we so rarely take the time to learn about theirs.  Poking fingers, close little faces, tail pulling and high pitched screams scare animals.  They want to flee from this.  If they don't, they are tolerating it for some other reason.  It's not bcause they love it.  I have a number of reasons why I say that they are tolerating it instead of running from it, but rather than ramble on about that in this posting, if you ask me I will happily share.

Sadie issues a low growl when Allie is getting to be too much.  I tell Justin all of the time how lucky we are that she warns us.  A lot of dogs would just react.  We teach Allie that if a dog growls, it's warning you to back off or there will be repercussions.  We teach her that a lot of dogs wont growl so there is certain behavior that is not permissible around animals.  She pushes  her limits sometimes, so we know that we need to be completely aware and focused when she's around dogs.

Notice that I say "we" followed by action words.  It's OUR  responsibility to know our children and how they will behave around animals.  It's OUR responsibility to be on red alert when there are animals near our children.  Unless you or your child is attacked by an animal without interacting with it first, the outcome is all on us as parents.  (Notice I didn't use the word provoked.... what you consider provoking is what YOU think it is) Your child is too young to be held accountable but not too young to learn.  The animal is an instinctual being and will react accordingly.  If we can remember these things, I think it will be helpful in creating a great bond between children and our pets.

RUDE-y Tootie FRESH & Cutie

At two years old, Allie was already being annoyed by our "fuddy duddy" behavior.  Wait until we are REALLY old....we will be trying her patience big time!  This photo was taken one late summer afternoon in 2012.  We decided we were going to the pool and apparently we weren't moving fast enough for her liking.  I remember searching for our bathing suits and Justin was in the bathroom and Allie wanted to be at the pool, like, yesterday.  

Let me first mention that one of her first ten words was "ning-a-ning-a-ning", which had multiple definitions.  It referred to swimming, the pool itself and her bikini.  Now, I know its not a REAL word, but if you spoke Allienese you knew what it meant.  She has a much broader vocabulary now, but we still refer to the pool as The "Ning-a-ning-a-ning".  I'm sure that's wrong in the world of vocabulary development, but....we don't care.

Back to my story.....I was walking past the living room and caught a glimpse of Miss Atta Tudey sitting in her Elmo chair, tapping her fingers, wearing the only piece of her swim ensemble that she could find (the floatation device), and oozing annoyance.  Im sure grabbing my phone and taking a photo of her didn't help her attitude but I couldn't help it.

This is about the time that our sweet baby developed a fresh attitude.  Up until then, we were her wonderful, perfect parents who she just wanted to tag along with.  Suddenly, she was hitting, spitting, throwing things, getting frustrated with our behavior, and pushing us away saying "no touch!" when we went for the random hug for no reason.  Fortunately she never started biting.  While I was reading everything I could on this new undesirable behavior I found so many horror stories about biting and kept telling myself that we were lucky she never resorted to that.  I feel for the parents who have a biter at this stage.

It's a confusing time as a parent not just because of what she is doing, but also because we are constantly trying to figure out what the appropriate reaction to this behavior is.  Her actions are telling us she's frustrated or unhappy about something.  Her vocabulary isn't yet fabulous so words aren't the best way to communicate how she feels when she feels something strongly.  She has a right to say that she doesn't want to be touched, even if it's just her parents who want to give her a hug or kiss because we adore her.  I don't want her to ever feel like she ISN'T in control of what happens to her body.  No means no, starting now.  But I don't want to raise a bratty child who thinks she can act out either.  

The first time I saw her hit my mother I thought I was going to lose my mind.  UNACCEPTABLE.  No assaulting the grandparents....ever!  No pummeling anyone else either.....unless they are pummeling you first, but we can wait on that lesson until she gets a little older.  Do we wait until she's older and speaking better to really enforce the other fresh behaviors?  Are we stifling her from venting the only way she knows how?  Is throwing a toy across the room at nothing okay now?  Or are we starting a bad habit?  

It's kind of like the whole crying thing.  When babies are born, they tell you that you should never let them cry.  Apparently it has a huge impact on their self confidence later in life if they cry and no one comes right away or at all.  At some point this changes.  I'm not sure when, but eventually "crying it out" becomes helpful (not in my world, but that's just me).  No one can define when it goes from detrimental to acceptable.  So, at what time does throwing a tantrum of sorts go from being acceptable to damaging?  I hope I don't miss that checkpoint.