Yorkie-Poo

As an alpha dog, I am here to tell you that being the leader of the pack is not all it's cracked up to be.  Remember when Scott bought that cute little Yorkie-poo?  I don't know much about the "Yorkie" portion of her name, but I know A LOT about the "poo" part.  I'm the alpha dog, meaning that Prestie only comes when I call her, follows me around all day long and is accustomed to me being the one trying to train her.  Scott tries, but he's just not alpha dog material.  And the kids?  Let me just tell ya, buying a pet in order to teach responsibility is a load of crap.  Literally.  Kids have to go to school.  So it's all me.  Unfortunately, I am not a dog whisperer.  I'm more of a dog yeller and curser, especially when I find little Prestie-poos on the carpet.  When those little brown indiscretions happen, it seems like my whole life has become a massive joke of a failure.  Conversely, when Prestie does her thing outside, I feel absurdly joyful, like I am the luckiest girl in the world.  It's ridiculous!  Internet research notwithstanding, I am the worst dog trainer ever!  Have you seen the dog owners on America's Funniest home Videos?  They're definitely not the best and the brightest, yet they're able to train their dogs.  I must be incredibly stupid, and I just don't know it.  Kinda like Prestie, but without the cute, tangerine-colored eyelashes.

Yesterday, after an incident in Ari's room, I was so enraged, I offered Ruby a trip to San Francisco if she would sell Prestie.  San Francisco!  It was like temporary insanity.  Thank heavens she said no because even with the proceeds from the puppy, we would have to send Ruby on the trip by herself in order to afford it.  Of course, instead of selling her, we could send Prestie with Ruby to SFO and hope she got run over by a cable car.  (The dog, not Ruby.)  It's something to think about, anyway.  Scott almost got run over by a cable car in Vienna right after we were married, and he's much more cognizant of traffic laws than Prestie, so it could happen.

While we're saving up for the Trip of Death, I am trying out a new technique.  Prestie is on a leash with me at all times, except when she's outside or in her kennel.  That way, she can't sneak away and do something naughty that ruins Golda's expensive scale book or Ari's homework.  In a twisted, canine version of Stockholm Syndrome, I am growing to love Prestie by having her tethered to me.  She's soft and fluffy and tenderhearted.  She yelps when she gets scared and hangs out under the high chair for scraps.  She is funny and playful.  Next thing you know, I'll be sending videos in to AFV of Prestie saying "I wuuuv woo!"

I wuv woo too, Prestie!

Ruined

 Well, I've ruined my last remaining perfect child.  I drove up to the McDonald's drive-through the other day and Ptolemy started whining, "I Coke!  I Coke!"  Sad, huh?  Not only does he recognize the tragically iconic giant cup with a straw, but he recognizes the drive-through before we even get the drink.  The same thing happened to Golda when she was a baby.  One look at the Wendy's logo and she would say automatically, "Nuggies!  Want Nuggies!"  In my defense, there was almost nothing to do in Moscow, Idaho, except go to Wendy's or drive to the bear preserve.  That, and troll Wal-Mart for clearance items.  You can only stay home for so long!  (In my case, one episode of Barney and a ten minute game of peek-a-boo and we're packing the diaper bag.)

Poor little Ptolemy has a mom who is operating on a fraction of the brain cells she had in 1989, for example, when she decided it would be a good idea to drive to Jackson Hole at midnight in a blizzard.  (Thanks again for stopping us, Marlene!)  Does that put it into perspective for you?  I'm still unclear about how Tolly got this stick of "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!"  I know I was on the phone, fixing dinner and helping four kids with homework at the time, so I'm lucky I handed him something that wasn't toxic.  By the way, I can't believe it's not butter either.  I thought it was when I bought it.

39 Things I Love

 Picture taken by Xanthe!  Good job, X!

Happy birthday to me! On my thirty-ninth birthday, here are 39 things I love about my life at 39:

1. Being married to the love of my life
2. Having all my children here with me
3. Living in a house that I love
4.  Having the Gospel to help me teach my kids and direct my life
5. Having my parents living practically in our back yard!
6. Family so close by
7. Cousins!
8. Having learned the very useful skill of saying NO!
9. Teaching ballet
10. Having violin students again after a few years' break
11. Knowing what I'm doing in the violin shop business
12. The people I get to make friendships with through my violin shop
13. Thursday lunches with my oldest friends
14. Reading good books
15. Relying on close friends
16. Scott working with my dad and Josh
17. Book club
18. Raising kids in my hometown
19.  Excellent public schools
20.  The French Immersion program
21.  My kids having school, music and dance teachers who are wonderful.
22.  Hot chocolate
23.  David's Pizza
24.  The beautiful mountain view I have driving up and down Crestwood Road
25.  Fond childhood memories
26.  That I'm not as stupid as I was in college
27.  The creative outlet of writing on my blog
28.  Two great brothers, lots of great in-laws
29.  The blessing of being able to protect and provide for our children
30.  The political stability of the democracy we are fortunate enough to live in
31.  Family vacations
32.  Listening to my kids practice
33.  Our favorite Vietnamese restaurant, Kim Long.  The owners gave me cake for my birthday!
34.  Chocolate chip cookies
35.  Color
36.  Living in a time when there are so many options for women
37.  Being healthy
38.  Having been able to adopt Xanthe
39.  Having Ptolemy when we almost didn't get to have him

Mostly, I'm thankful that it's so easy to come up with 39 things off the top of my head that I love about my life.  I'm happy right here, right now, and so thankful to be able to say that.  If you're a friend of mine, go indulge in a little treat for yourself in honor of my birthday.  Have a good one!

Saturday Art Gallery

Welcome to my Saturday art gallery. Our show today consists of works from children ages four to thirteen. Enjoy!

Henry's scary spider. I love its angry expression!  Age 6

Freestone's sketch has a lot of detail and minimalist amounts of paint.  He was very careful. Age 7.

Golda copied a book cover from The Hallo-Weiner. Cute!

A monster house with bloody fangs, ready to eat a beautiful princess by Araceli.  Scary!  Age 8

Emma's Halloween collection.  Great skeleton!  Age 8

Two Evil Villains by Ellison, the Headless Horseman and Click-Click Clash.  She sketched it first, then painted it.  Wow!  Age 9

Joshie doesn't know what this is.  He was going from the gut.  :)  Age 4

Uh-oh.  Well, THIS was bound to happen.  Oops!

That's Esmae and Xanthe by Xanthe.  Age 5

Henry's headless horseman.  Is that awesome or WHAT?

Another of Xanthe's portraits of Xanthe and Esmae.

Portrait of Xanthe by Esmae.  First she painted the face brown.  Then she looked at Xanthe and painted over it in yellow.  So funny!  Age 4

Araceli was inspired by an artist in Imperial Beach who teaches art to children every Saturday for free. His students have done artwork all over town, including the outside of Bibby's Shell Shop! Yes, that was done by kids. No wonder Araceli was so inspired. I was too! I vowed to give my kids more opportunities to express their creativity through art. That's why, when Ari informed me that she was going to invite her friends over to paint on Saturday, I was thrilled. I must say, the results were amazing. All kids are artists, and I think the kids who invaded my kitchen this morning have to be among the most creative and wonderful in the world!  I love what they can do with no grown-up interference. Aren't they inspiring with their free spirits?

Balance

Ari's skeleton book report.

Early this morning, a mom dragged her two children out of bed to be at violin lessons by seven.  The eight-year-old boy was so determined and so focused during his lesson.  As his teacher, I was proud.  At past lessons, I had seen shame on his face when he played something wrong, and I had tried to eradicate that feeling from our time together.  After the lesson, his mom confided in me that he is struggling in school.  She showed me his workbook, with lengthy notes scrawled on every page by the teacher.  "Juan isn't listening.  Juan needs to focus more.  Juan didn't finish his work.  Juan is too wiggly.  He never finishes anything.  He needs to do better."  His poor mother!  Her son struggles with ADD, and she is at a loss.  I told her, "Juan is smart.  Juan is good.  I love Juan."  Her eyes filled with tears and she said, "You see?  You know?  Thank you!"  As if it were a gift to her that someone could see her son's intelligence and spirit.  And it is a gift.  It is a gift that every teacher has to give every student in some way.  Last year, I felt like Juan's mom with Freestone.  Every day at school was full of negative reinforcement and the message, "You're not doing enough.  You don't listen.  You're bad."  Turns out, Freestone is a great student and a fabulous reader, and his grades were almost perfect.  Why did he and I have to feel like such miserable failures, even as he succeeded?  There is enormous pressure not to be the kid whose homework packet is unfinished, or worse, left home on the kitchen table.  It seems like everyone else is doing everything perfectly, all the time, and both the kids and parents are afraid to drop even one ball for fear they will all come crashing down.

Last night at ballet, my dancers choreographed and performed a Halloween dance in groups.  As they danced their creations, the infinite worth of each girl just overwhelmed me.  I could see the light that is in each one of them, and I understood for one moment that I have stewardship over that light when I teach them.  My primary responsibility is to keep that light alive, not to force a perfect tendu from each girl or make them feel in any way inadequate.  These are small children who are working very, very hard.

I love that my kids have homework and practicing, and I want to help them push and learn and achieve and do a good job.  At some point, though, I have to take a step back from the constant drive forward and tell them the simple truth:  "You are good.  You are smart.  Your worth can't be measured in worksheets and can't be diminished by missed spelling words, wrong answers or bad scores."  Those things are superfluous to what really matters, which might just be gathering acorns with your brother and using the cheese grater to turn them into dust while your homework sits neglected.

This morning when I got home from teaching, and from my conversation with Juan's mom, my children somehow looked more fragile and innocent, just like Juan, whose teacher had labeled him "bad."  Here were these small people, fixing themselves breakfast, getting their things ready, worrying about being prepared.  I sat down to practice with Freestone and his eyes were sad.  The task seemed too overwhelming.  After a crazy internal battle (Am I ruining music for him by pushing him?  Yeah, but am I spoiling him if I let him off the hook?  Am I being mean or am I teaching discipline by demanding results?), I put the violin away and washed away his sad and worried eyes with a hug.  I told him, "Violin is a fun thing I like to do with you.  You're really good at it.  If we're not having fun, we'll just put it away.  OK?"  His relief was palpable, and he smiled.

Tomorrow I'll be the demanding mom who insists on 100% practicing and homework completion.  But today?  I think we might just have time for some acorn gathering.

Tabula Rasa

I love a clean slate.  We came home from the beach, which in itself was a cleansing experience, to find that Coco had been up to her old tricks.  Whenever we go away, something gets coconized, meaning organized by my mom.  We absolutely LOVE that Coco has this organizing compulsion.  She did the pantry, complete with a wreath on the door, and the kitchen, including the fridge and all the drawers.  Now my dishrag drawer is a little slice of heaven, stocked with new, fresh rags instead of old bibs and dried bread crumbs.  Luxury!

My phone is a clean slate, too.  I lost my phone in a restaurant in Coronado, so my new phone has no contact numbers.  My brain has gotten lazy, relying solely on my phone contact list to function, so I don't know anyone phone numbers at all.  So if you call me, we'll still be friends.  If not...I'll miss you! 

I'm also wiping the slate clean with my diet.  Lunch and dinner are salads.  I don't scrimp on the toppings (tuna, hard-boiled eggs, nuts, cranberries, cilantro, avocado, apples, oranges, ham, cheese, sunflower seeds...), but the dressing is limited to sesame oil and soy sauce or apple cider vinegar.  Let's hope the greens will eradicate the effects of Seacoast Pizza and peanut butter cookies.  I'm loving the change, actually.  The fresh food matches the magnificent weather and makes me feel crisp and new, like a brilliant fall day.  I just have to plan the next trip to coincide with my rag drawer getting messed up again!  Mom?  You in?

Beach

What happened?  Our beach trip is over and we're back home.  It was such a wonderful trip.  There were lots of funny highlights and whole strings of relaxed and peaceful moments.  The real world hardly intruded, especially after I lost my phone.  It was nice just to be gone.

The first day, we made our pilgrimage to the 99 cent store.  This is the best 99 cent store in the world.  You can find treasures there, and we budget a hundred bucks for our first visit.  Ryan saw us loading up on girl-scout quality cookies and bags of chips and thought we were going overboard.  We told him this was just the stash for the first day.  Sure enough, we were back for more chocolate-peanut butter and thin mint cookies within twelve hours.  We're hard core when it comes to cookie consumption when we're on the beach.  Jennie magically solved every childish complaint with four words:  "Ya want a cookie?"

With Ryan and Jennie and their four kids, our group was a bit of a freak show.  I tried to downplay the number of kids we had trailing after us, but people still gaped.  My favorite was one day when I went from the beach to the hot tub and nine of the ten kids managed to follow me.  I was sitting in the hot tub with all of them when Freestone said urgently, "Mom!  There are only nine kids here!"  He thought we had lost someone.  The other people in the hot tub just stared.

My favorite zoo moment was when Ryan saw a roaming peacock and pushed Xanthe and Izzy in the stroller toward the bird.  Xanthe got all nervous and said, "I don't like chickens!  I don't like chickens!"  Scott's best zoo moment was getting caricatures  done of each kid.  They turned out really good.  Scott was all teary-eyed, thinking about how much the kids wanted to have their caricatures done, and how it reminded him of a trip to Tijuana as a kid.  He had dragged his parents all over the city looking for the best black-velvet painting.  He finally found it, a moonscape, and they hauled the big, framed piece of art everywhere.  He knew they loved him.  It does take love to allow your child to buy a painting done on black velvet, and then to let them hang it in the house!

Tuesday was Scott's 40th birthday.  He and I got dressed up for a night out in Coronado.  Our plan was sushi, but we ran into a quaint little French restaurant with a prix fixe menu that sounded delicious, so we went in.  It was the perfect celebration.

I think we did everything on our list, in between the hours of lounging.  Ryan and Scott took the older girls to the Cheesecake factory.  Ryan rented a surf board and was schooled by the Pacific Ocean.  The Scott Dopps dined out together at a hamburger joint in Coronado.  (6 kids in a restaurant=freak show.  No good.)  Jennie and Ryan took Lexie and Golda to the San Diego temple to do baptisms, then out to lunch.  What a special experience!  Later in the week, we hit the pier, a street fair and Bibby's Shell Shop.  Bibby had new murals on the outside, so we took lots of pictures besides the traditional shark.  Every morning, Scott and I each took a kid or two on a special date.  Scott likes Katy's Cafe and I usually go up the street to Starbucks where the kids can get a one dollar hot chocolate and a chocolate croissant and I can people-watch.  We barbequed outside, which was delicious.  We made hot cocoa every night in our cocoa machine, topped with whipped cream.  We visited the Atnips in their new, fabulous home in Temecula.  What fun seeing old friends!  We had a really good time.  In fact, our kids all wanted to move in with Tim and Courtney!  And we logged many hours of boogie boarding, sitting in the sand, simmering in the hot tub and swimming, the staples of a good beach trip.  And the cookies, of course.  And the incidents like "Hot Tubgate" and "Aloeveragate."  We loved sharing the trip with Ryan and Jennie.  Thanks, guys.

The last day, one of the kids started to cry when we said goodbye to the condo, and it got all of us sobbing.  Even though Imperial Beach only happens once a year, if that, the condo we rent feels like a second home.  I can still hear the ocean waves crashing and the clothes dryer humming and see the littles fast asleep on the floor near the windows, their cheeks sunkissed, hair toussled, bodies completely relaxed.  I love that feeling.  I love Imperial Beach!