Parenting at its finest...

   This year my daughter becomes a teenager...

As I sit back with my photo albums and reminiscence over the years gone by I think, 

WHAT KIND OF PARENTS DID THIS KID HAVE?

   I was quite sure when we brought her home from the hospital that we thought we knew what we were doing. After all, it wasn't the first time we had ever been around kids. We were rather savvy at the hospital and the staff was convinced that this child wasn't our first.

   But after leafing through a few pages in the album, I began to wonder how we got this far.

   It seems as though we had some rather questionable ideas about parenting. And our little bundle of joy wondered about those ideas as well. Not daunted in the least by our early efforts, we continued to expose our daughter to all the things in life that we loved the most. Especially our love of the outdoors. That is where she discovered things like mountain climbing...

   I swear, we only let her out of the backpack at the top of the mountain for two minutes. How were we to know a baby can scale fence in 1.5 seconds??? Thank heavens for the young man who grabbed her by the back of the shirt before she vaulted the railing....

   Having learned from this adventure, we thought perhaps she should be introduced to safer pursuits. Like piloting a boat... The captain thought it was a good idea to let a two year old behind the wheel of a commercial watercraft carrying twenty passengers on Lake Jackson, so hey, why not!

Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

    

As parents, we are firm believers in encouraging curiosity...

Checking stuff out and trying new things...

 

 

   Which led us to the occasion when we let her drive a horse and carriage. What parent could refuse to let their five year old take the reins of a horse and carriage down a major thoroughfare in a city?  Surprisingly, she handled traffic quite well.

It hadn't occurred to us that other parents didn't do this.

   We are also the same parents who considered it a terrific idea to send our daughter up in a single engine aircraft to try her hand at flying just after she turned seven. With her usual sense of adventure, she was eager to give this a whirl, so again we thought, why not? Once in the air, she was thrilled to be given control of the plane to navigate the sky. It never occurred to us that we hadn't met anyone else that let their kids do this.

   Speaking of flying, a few years later we were the same parents who thought it would be okay to let her fly without the aircraft. To our credit, we didn't let her jump out of an airplane...

  

   I am still not sure how we managed to make it this far in our parenting journey. But having arrived at the teenage years with all her limbs attached, I figure we might as well forge ahead to the next chapter. Perhaps, having honed our skills over the last thirteen years, we may yet prove to be good parents.

   Wonder if it is too early for driving? 

If you want to paint a room....

   If you want to paint a room,

You will need to sit down with a cup of coffee and think about paint colors. 

   When you sit down to pick a paint color, you will realize that you need swatches!

   After you pick the swatches for your room, you may determine that you have no idea what color will actually work in your space. 

   Then you will have to look for help. When you look for help, you will find there is an app for that. Several in fact. Paint Tester, Project Color and Visualizer, just to name a few of the apps available to make selecting a color easier for you. 

   Once you settle on an app, you will find that you need a second opinion. Fortunately, there are decorators, friends, store employees, even strangers on the street that are all willing to help. Your family will want to give opinions too. 

   The opinions will delay your color decision and you will tape swatches to the wall.

   When you tape the swatches to the wall, you will see that the wall needs washing.

   So you will take out your cleaning supplies and start washing walls.

   Then you will notice that your wall needs a repair from that time you moved the heavy chair. 

   That is when you will make a list of what you need from the store to make the repairs. As you make this list, you will add things that you will need later in your painting project, like rollers and painters tape.

   When you add painters tape to your list, you will look at the baseboard in the room.

   And discover some of the base board needs replacing....

  

  

   So you measure the baseboard to be replaced and take a trip to the store.

   At the store you will discover they no longer make the size baseboard that is in your house. Which means you will have to go home and measure all the baseboard in the room for replacement in order to make the room visually uniform.

   When you measure the baseboard, however, you will find yourself close to the floor.

There you will notice stains on the rug.

   When you notice the stains on the rug, you will think about replacing the rugs. As you consider rug choices you will remember there is hardwood under the rugs.

   When you think of the hardwood under the rugs, you will remember that the hardwood in the bedroom needed considerable work.

    Then you will start researching refinishing hardwood floors. Once you start researching, you may determine that refinishing the floors may be more than you will be able to do on your own. So you might solicit help.

   Soliciting help from others will remind you of the help you received when picking a paint color for the room...

   And when you remember all that help you received, you just might take down all those paint swatches you taped up around the house and have that cup of coffee instead.

   

Rethinking Resolutions

   I decided several years ago that I don't do New Year's resolutions. They just suck, and there are a number of reasons why:

1. Too often they are goals thought up while imbibing in way too much alcohol. Though they sounded great at the time of inception, reality is harsh and keeping resolutions that don't involve more drinking can be really tough!
2. Resolutions don't tend to be much fun. Who makes resolutions to eat more cookies or add lazy days to the calendar? See what I mean?
3. Resolutions tend to be broken...right away...like on the first day of the New Year. And who wants to start the new year off despondent?

   So at some point, I stopped making them. It may have been the New Year's celebration when I had nothing to drink, the year I was pregnant. Therefore I had a clear enough head to realize that any goals that I may set that evening would probably be pointless and rather depressing later. Or perhaps it was because I was pregnant and about to give birth any day (baby didn't actually come along for another 31 days) that resolutions were the last thing I needed.

Either way, I was right.

   I would have been really upset if I had made New Year's resolutions that evening, because once our little bundle of joy did make an appearance, there would have been no way in Hell I could have kept them. I was lucky if I could keep my act together most days. Resolutions would have been far more than I could handle.

Since that fateful year, I have never made any resolutions. 

Until now.

 
   Well, I didn't actually make New Year's resolutions in the traditional sense of the term. I didn't make any promises on New Year's Eve, perhaps because I had no alcohol that night and I was enjoying an evening with my daughter. I set no fantastic goals that would start the very next day. But, after having survived the first week of the year without a major mishap, I began to think setting goals might not be such a bad thing. And not wanting to keep all the fun to myself, I made resolutions for my entire household!

My family may be hiding out in the crawl space at this time.

I am certain I will find them soon.

  Really, they shouldn't worry too much. Since I had time to think about goals and what we could realistically accomplish, I set objectives that we have the potential to actually achieve. After all, they are not too difficult....

• Always have Chocolate in the house!

We all like chocolate, especially dark chocolate. It can be the stuff you add to cookies, or something for a special recipe, but there really is nothing like a piece of chocolate for a special treat!

Besides, it might ensure that I remain human the ENTIRE month.

• Prepare at least three home cooked dinners a week. The old fashioned kind, homemade, you know, with cut up veggies and stuff. 

   No, it doesn't have to come from our own garden! Remember, I am not making resolutions destined to fail. Fruit market, grocery store or neighbors gardens, all works for me! If we have time and energy for our own garden...great. If not, my friends are most generous and I am willing to trade services.

   Why not six or seven home cooked meals a week? Seriously? There are only three of us living here. Most recipes are for four or more individuals that eat three servings apiece. The leftovers alone would be a nightmare! With three scheduled meals a week there are usually three nights of leftovers. That leaves one night for pizza or chicken nuggets or pot pies!

• Organize and minimize once a quarter.

   I am usually pretty good at going through our stuff, organizing and reducing what we actually need and use. For the most part, so is my family. We don't have closets overflowing with stuff, attics bursting at the seams, or piles of old magazines, but we do have odds and ends that hang out long past their useful date. Sheets that no longer fit the bed well. Stuffed animals haunting the bottom of crates. VHS tapes.

Stuff from before we updated our kitchen.

While a few of these things will return to a new place, the rest need to find a new home.

  My idea is set a date on the calendar (one that corresponds closely to the Amvets pick up date in our area). We can be more conscious of the "stuff" with which we surround ourselves. Once every three months should help keep the clutter down and make us more mindful of what we enjoy, as well as give us more space in which to enjoy each other's company.

Because my teenage daughter is gonna love having more space in which she can spend time with me....

What crochets around comes around...

   It has been a long time since I have worked on a crocheting project. Now that my broken thumb has pretty much healed and the holiday bustle is over, I am considering tackling a new project. I am trying to decide between a baby sweater with gorilla length arms or a cozy blanket that tapers at one end. Or perhaps a pair of mittens with no thumbs. The options are endless and I have all the supplies I need, skeins of yarn, hot beverage and my beloved crochet hooks from my grandma.

   My grandmother was the one who taught me to crochet. It started with one medium sized crochet hook and one very tightly crocheted chain. From that chain came the most lopsided, irregular afghan ever made, and a life-long love of creating with a hook and some yarn. Using the hooks always brings back warm memories of my grandmother, as well as the unusual story behind the hooks.

   You see, I didn't inherit my grandmother's hooks.

   They were given to me...by one of my best friends.

   Yes, you heard me right, from one of my best friends. And no, we are not related.

    You see, my grandmother's hooks had long ago been passed to an aunt, who passed them on to a friend. I never gave them much thought when my grandmother died, after all I hadn't created anything in years. Maybe even eons. What did I need crochet hooks for?

   Until the creative bug bit me one fateful Friday night.

   It was on Friday nights when I always met up with my best friend to hang. Sometimes we watched our favorite TV shows together, or visited neighborhood shops near my apartment. Other times we enjoyed the view off her balcony swapping stories and having wine coolers. This particular Friday we had decided to craft together. I brought over a book of patterns and some yarn I had picked up at the store. As she was opening some wine coolers, I was leafing through the pages of my new book looking for something nifty and different to create. I was limited, however, by my selection of hooks to choose from. I owned two hooks of dubious quality and had not thought to purchase new ones.

   As I was bemoaning my meager selection of tools, she jumps up and says "Hang on" then leaves the room. Puzzled, I waited. She didn't crochet. I wondered if maybe she had taken up metal-work and cast a whole bunch of hooks....

   But no, she came trotting back in the room with a bulging old brown vinyl zipper pouch. "For you." she said presenting her trophy proudly. "I knew these were waiting for a good home."

   It was a very familiar bulging brown vinyl zipper pouch. It looked like a case my grandmother had used. I unzipped the proffered pouch and what I discovered inside floored me. It WAS my grandmother's old case. Inside were her hooks as well as her sewing scissors and even a familiar wooden spool of reddish brown thread.

   "Where the heck did you get this?" I asked.

   The answer was she got them from her aunt, who had recently passed away. She inherited them.

   Turns out her deceased aunt used to live across the street from my aunt. The same aunt who my grandmother had given the crochet needles to a long time ago and who had, in turn, passed them on.

   Forget six degrees of separation; change that to just the width of a crochet hook!

   I don't recall doing much crafting that night, but I do remember swapping childhood stories. Although my friend and I had not met until college, turns out we both played in the same backyard, swam in the same pool and hung out with the same neighborhood kids - some of whom were related to us!

   Over the years, I have learned some pretty elaborate stitches thanks to the really cool book mentioned before, and enjoyed hours of creating with yarn using the beloved hooks that never fail to bring me warm memories. My love for crocheting has given me a chance to work on some really wonderful projects...

Snowflake?

Some more successful than others.