TJ's new PJs

TJ's new PJs are purple with decorative birds.  I know the design is intended for girls. But he doesn't. He says he's 'warm and cozy,' and has been begging for 'footie' pajamas for weeks. They're hard to find in a 5T. But Costco had a table-full of Carter's footie flannel pajamas yesterday when we made a quick stop for the essentials (eggs and wine).

My first stab at the dinosaur, pirate and sporting-themed designs netted me about 20 pairs in 3T and another 15 in 6 months. Neither was going to work. 

So I dug deeper, trying not to make too much of a mess (I worked retail once; I know how it goes). The sign told me I had a chance: Carters One-Piece Pajamas, 6mos-5T, $7.99.

My second go of it netted me another few dozen 3Ts and several 18-months. Finally, a dinosaur 4T and the purple, birded 5T. I held up the 4T to TJ's back. Nope, way too small. The 5T was going to fit perfectly.

"But those are girl ... ," Luke started before I shot him one of my shut-your-pie-hole-before-I-shut-it-for-you looks.

"I love them," said TJ. "Can I wear them now?"

I figured for $8, if after only two weeks he decided they were too girly, I'd send them on their way to our pint-sized niece. But for now, the boy is warm and cozy. 

Which melts my heart.

Happy new year! Stay warm, stay cozy.



Where's Your Crisis Nursery?

The little guy loves his time on the farm.

The irony of it was not lost on me when I had to bug out of a Maryville Crisis Nursery tour a few minutes early so that I could drive the two-and-a-half hours north to the nearly-half-way point between my home and my inlaws' farm to pick up my 2-year-old.

That was just after Halloween.

Eight weeks later, I'm readying myself for another trip to pick up the tot. I admit to getting pretty greedy this time. Eight weeks ago, Andy spent three nights with grandma and papa simply because we'd met at our half-way point for another purpose and it seemed like a good idea to 'take a break.' Plus, it meant Halloween night for our two older boys without the stress of having to get 'the baby' down by 6:30 p.m. and then worrying every time the door bell rang.

This time, it's been four nights for my little break. It was going to be three nights, but then I realized how much more I could get accomplished during these fast, last days leading to Christmas, without Andy underfoot. And I had a timing challenge on our originally scheduled day. How was I going to drive the five-plus hours to get there and back and still be back in time to pick up the middle guy from his standard two-and-a-half-hour preschool day?

So I asked for the extra night, and my wish was granted. And did I EVER accomplish great things with my extra day (mostly sorting out/wrapping Christmas gifts that have been shoved into a crawl space, the only hiding space I think is still unknown to the boys.)

I consider my inlaws my "crisis nursery." When I'm drawn in too many directions or simply feel I'm getting sucked into a vicsious parenting undertow, I know I have dependable and loving people in my life who will throw me a lifeline and keep me afloat.

I'm so lucky to have these generous people in my life.

Many parents are not as lucky, which is why the Maryville Crisis Nursery opened five years ago. Whether their crisis is like mine (but x10) -- or one of a more dire nature, such as hospitalization of a parent or sibling, some parents have no one they trust to care for their children.

I first discovered Maryville Crisis Nursery nearly five years ago when we'd moved (back) to the area and (incorrectly) thought we were done having children. I was looking for a worthy place to take all my old baby gear, and discovered the nursery, which could either use my stuff in its facility or sell it at its resale shop.

Halloween without the youngest brother. Scary.

Many parents are not as fortunate. Many parents have no one to care for their young children if tragedy, simply a hard turn, or plain-old exhaustion befalls them.


They may be single parents, young parents; they maybe parents who are trying to stay away from trouble that seems to come knocking at their doors on a regular basis. They may be parents just like me, but with no one to depend on. It doesn't matter. They are parent who care deeply, who love their children enough to know they need a little help.

They're parents, just like me, a Mom who needs a little help from time to time, no matter the reason.

I soon learned the the Maryville Crisis Nursery:

• is a short-term shelter for children when parents are in crisis
• provides care at no cost to families
• is the only crisis nursery in Chicago and one of only six in Illinois
• can show that 98% of families who use the Crisis Nursery indicate they are better parents through its use
• have had  more than 3,000 admissions since it opened its doors five year ago.

I'm so very thankful that my inlaws can take care of any (and sometimes all) of my children when I need them to. I'm just as thankful for the Maryville Crisis Nursery to provide the same comfort to other parents. That's why our family chooses to support Maryville Crisis Nursery.

Cheers, and happy holidays!

Getting to the Art of the Problem

When my oldest was little, and for the nearly five years he was an 'only,' every art project his brilliant, creative hands and mind engineered was a Picasso. Sometimes we could even determine what it was 'meant' to be (unlike most Picassos, which leave me scratching my head).

Many of his Kindergarten and 1st grade creations are framed and adorn our otherwise art-less walls.

But then more "art" came home from school. While the "art" didn't really improve much in the past few years, we added two children to our family, both of whom create equally beautiful one-, two- and three-dimensional artworks at preschool and with their talented babysitters. That's a lot of art.

I view them; I appreciate them. Entering any of my children's bedrooms, you will walk into a gallery of beautiful, unique and often curious works. What doesn't get Scotch-taped to the bedrooms' walls, I usually toss into the recycling bin. I'm usually narced by Someone. "You're recycling THIS?," Someone cries regularly. So I've had to get sneaky about getting rid of all the artwork, but get rid of it I do.

Do I feel guilty?  A little. I'll get over it. I hope they do too, someday.

To the many artists I am proud to call my friends, cheers! I wonder if your Moms kept everything you created as tots?

"He Didn't Do His Farming at the Tavern"

Earlier this week I dug into the box of family history salvaged from my mother's place when she died nearly five years ago. I'd never bothered to look at it before Wednesday, the day before my 4th-grader's Ellis Island project was due. 

I always work better with a deadline.

My favorite line from a letter written by my Grandma Anderson, when my Mom and I were compiling the histories more than two decades ago, was the one about my Great Uncle Jack Martin, who, according to his niece-in-law, my Grandma A., "never lost any money farming because he didn't do his farming at the tavern." I'm not sure if that was supposed to be a compliment or simply a slam on the relatives who lost their farms in the Depression and the years following, all who and ended up becoming successful railroad men.

The box is rich with history, although there are a lot of holes I need to fill. I'm hoping an uncle on my Dad's side can fill in the details for the Bennetts, but it'll be a little more difficult for the Thompson/Anderson/Hogle side of the family, as my mother was an only child; her mother had been adopted (although we do have stories of her biological mother, including the one of her stealing my grandmother, forcing my great grandparents to move from Minnesota to North Dakota to try get away from her!); and my grandfather was also adopted, but never legally, after his biological mother died a few month after giving birth to him, her 10th child, in the flu pandemic in 1914; so things are a bit of a mess here).

For Luke's project, I sent him to school with a picture of the trunk, pictured here, that my Great Grandmother Anderson (then a Hansen) brought with her on her voyage, alone, from Norway to America at the tender age of 17. She came in steerage and went through Ellis Island, according to the notes I've discovered.

I also sent with him the same woman's wedding dress. Her actual wedding dress! Why was that in a Sharper Image paper sack in my flood-friendly basement?! Horrors! (I am now in the market for a dress dummy I can use to display this simple but beautiful $6 JCPenny dress worn in 1910 in Ransom County, ND.)

Luke was required to include 'three interesting facts' about his ancestors in his report. He included a story of his great, great, great grandfather (Thompson) who was shot to death and robbed of $300 of gold he'd withdrawn from his bank before walking 28 miles to Fargo, ND, with the intention of buying farming supplies. He included a story of my great great grandfather Anderson, who is said to not even be an Anderson ... that his name was likely a form of Buvick when he came to America but was allegedly told there were too many people already with that name, so he had to change it. We don't know if this is true, but I've heard of similar stories of immigrants having to change their names upon entering the country. And he included the story of my Nora (Hansen) Anderson's emigration from Norway, with said trunk, with a job lined up as a farmer's wife's helper in North Dakota.

So a routine 4th grade project has reignited my interest in my ancestry. Of course, this family tree project will have to get in line, right after pulling together my boys' baby books, cleaning out my linen closet and learning to knit.

Wish me luck. I might just be successful, if I can keep away from the tavern.

Cheers!

Memory Road Trip

Of my most vivid, positive memories of growing up the only daughter and middle (favorite) child of John & Luella, our weeks-long, summer road trips are among my favorites.  Granted, I'm not sure I thought so at the time. My father didn't meet a roadside historical marker he didn't want to stop to see. My mother wouldn't let my father pass a greasy, local diner where she might find a reputable BLT or piece of cherry pie. (This picture is from one of those trips, but none of my folks' slides -- which I recently had digitized -- were dated or marked in any helpful way, so I have no recollection of where we might be.)

These were the days before straight-jacket-styled car seats and booster seats, so my two brothers and I were free to annoy one another in the back seat of our purple-ish Ford LTD (complete with "UffDa" license plates and stickers in the back window of every state we'd visited). Lines were drawn dividing the back seat into three parts, but, with a brother younger than me by nearly eight years, difficult to enforce. We enjoyed the requisite road trip games, including trying to spot license plates from the most 'foreign' state, or, even, crazy as it seemed then, from a province of Canada. Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall was sung. A lot. (And no one thought it might be inappropriate at the time.) No hand-held computer games, no cell phones, no I-Pods. Not even much radio, considering all of our trips started in Chicago and ventured west. Lots of dead air there. 

Central Kansas was always on the route, given that's where my father's family was. North Dakota was usually on the itinerary, to visit with the few members of my mother's family. In between these requisite family visits we saw the Badlands, the Rockies, Yellowstone, Mt. Rushmore. I didn't appreciate any of it at the time (just being honest here), but I do now.

What I do remember valuing was staying at various Holiday Inns and Howard Johnsons, where we would eat puffed Cheetos and drink root beer poolside with my Dad. My mother didn't like the water. She'd spent too much time, and money, on her hair to want to ruin it. But my Dad was all about the end-of-the-day swim with my brothers and me. Like most dads of that era, he spent a lot of time at work and not a lot of time doing dad things, non-disciplining dad things, that is. 

Monday would have been his 78th birthday, if he hadn't died too soon at 69. I'm not terribly sentimental, but I am very sorry my sons didn't know him. And I do miss him.

So, to John R., cheers.

A Simple Lesson in Humanity, Or is it Insanity?



Mrs. Mouse, before her parole.

I've come to accept that the occasional mouse in my 100-year-old house is to be expected. I'm even able to swallow my initial scream at the sight of such vermin if my boys are nearby, with the intention of not making them scaredy cats, too.

However, while I've accepted that rodents will find their way in to our home, I will not provide them with unlimited room and board. When identified, they must be, well, evicted.

Which brings us to our recent removal/replacement of a 30-year-old, over-sized basement fridge that led to the discovery of a mouse, of the dead variety. The kind delivery man calmly asked me for a plastic bag, and he disposed of the corpse. I didn't give it another thought.

... Until later that day when I started down the basement stairs only to be met with an excited, confused, grieving Mrs. Mouse. I called to Toby, my middle guy, who was nearby, to share my excitement.

"She's soooo cuuuuute," he responded, "can we keep her, you know, as a pet." [read: because Dad won't let us get a dog.]

Me, "Oh, yah, she is cute, you know, but, I really don't think she'd be happy in a cage. Why don't we help her get home, to her mouse friends?"

To the garage I went, where, miraculously, I remembered we'd left the Live Mouse Trap, given to me a decade ago by the woman after which my parents named me, when we were plagued by mice at a previous home. Karen died many years ago, and we'd moved many times since the original mouse problem. Never had the heart to tell her that we poisoned the life out of those mice, but I also never had the heart to get rid of the "Humane Mouse Kit."

Seriously. The packaging on this contraption includes, "Teach peace. Be Nice to Mice!" Also fun is the illustration of a mouse peeking out of a traditional mouse door and the words, "Mommy, must we kill the mouse?" ... "No, Honey. The world is big enough for all of us."

So I recently made a trip to an undisclosed location just outside my sleepy suburb, where we released Mrs. Mouse.

Live long and prosper, Mrs. Mouse. Just don't come home to visit any time soon.

Returning for a Bite of the Big Apple

Somehow I had managed to not return to New York City, a city I 'heart,' but a city I fled just as soon as my employer could get me a rental car after the horrific events of 9/11 ten years ago. 

At first I simply couldn't. I didn't want to leave the safety of my townhouse, which we were readying for the birth of our first child. I didn't want to travel anywhere, much less to the epicenter of the nation's worst (current generations') nightmare. I was scared. And like everyone else, I was sad and even a little shell-shocked from what I witnessed that otherwise-perfect fall Tuesday morning.

Like most of us, I got over it. When conversations turned to the attacks, sometimes I shared my story, but sometimes I was just so bored of it I couldn't imagine anyone would want to hear it. I still tear up or worse when I catch news coverage or when I quietly and truly reflect about all our country and our world lost that morning.

But still I didn't go back. It started to become a 'thing.' Kevin would suggest I join him on many of his NYC trips for work, and I always had a good reason why I couldn't (starting with one, then two, then three children).

As this much-hyped 10th anniversary approached, I decided I would return. Whether it would be an emotional, gut-wrenching journey or simply a great couple of days and nights in the Big apple, it would be done.

So last month, with the boys under the loving care of my generous in-laws, we caught an early morning flight. I spent my time in the air reading a Fodor's history of Manhattan, which gave me wonderful perspective of my walking tours the next few days. While I'd been to NYC many times prior to September 2001, mostly for work commitments, I never approached it like I did this time, with eyes, arms and heart wide open.

The morning started with a walk to The City Bakery for pretzel croissants (the maple-bacon biscuits were sold out) and gazpacho. Yummy. I was back in love already. Kevin left for his meetings, and I started my journey uptown, to the Museum of Modern Art. Six floors of art! Looking out the windows was a feast for eyes alone. 

So far, all I felt was excitement and gleefulness for my good fortune to be out-and-about in NYC. I started to walk back toward Gramercy Park, where we were staying, but stopped at the Lego Shop at Rockefeller Center. I asked the clerk why they were cordoning off the plaza. Was someone really famous coming to NBC? No, in fact, he explained, there was 'a jumper.' Someone was about to jump off the building. Why, I asked were thousands of people standing around with their cameras, then? Sick! Just 10 years ago people were jumping to avoid being burned alive, and now this sad soul was jumping, and worse, people were standing around waiting to capture it on the cell phone cameras? (A New Yorker friend of mine said that things weren't so bad, that before 9/11, people would have been shouting "jump!")*

I moved on, enjoyed a great evening of drinks, dinner and grown-up conversation with Kevin and his team, then started our next morning with a run to and around Central Park, wondering why we didn't live there. We stood at the bar at Antica Bottega del Vino for a creamy, very traditional cappuccino, then a little bit later enjoyed lunch, if you can call it that, at Doughnut Plant in Chelsea. Carrot cake, coconut creme, creme brulee, chocolate chip cookie. This was no Dunkin'.

Then it was time to visit Ground Zero. To take in as much of the city in as short of time as we had, I insisted we walk from our hotel to Ground Zero. It was also because I was very intimidated by the subway system. Above ground, I don't get lost. So we managed to take in most of Mid and Lower Manhattan's highlights as we strolled to the memorial site.

At the memorial preview site, we read individuals' stories and viewed a chronological photo and video essay of the morning's events. I cried, just a little cry. We made a modest contribution to the memorial fund, peaked at the beautiful fountains, still under construction then, and it was done. It was moving and cathartic to stand on those streets and bump elbows with a menagerie of the human race. But it was done.

It is done. New York City is as wonderful as its advertising claims. I look forward to many happy returns.

Peace.

*The man did jump, but I'm happy to report that NYC's rock star firefighters caught him.