Buy our lemonade!!

It was a 5 star day for our Bake sale at a nearby park (I wish our street had a lake on it...but that's for another blog). Joel rode around on his trike with a sign on the back until he got tired of his wheels getting stuck in the grass. Jamie stayed behind, for the most part, to man the stand or eat muffins, depending on your point of view. I think he had the best job.

So, Joel has the best sales strategy one could have. He walks right up to a perfectly content stranger who is soaking up the sun or watching kids playing in the lake and holds his sign up to her and waits for a response. At this point, a decision must be made. "Do I tell this kid to beat it?" or what? Because he is a patient fellow and a man of few words when he is put to task, he stands firm until this poor stranger is utterly convinced that he has been sent here to show her the way to lemonade heaven.

He really brought in the customers from all around the park. I dare say he stood out possessing a real gift for salesmanship. I don't really want to think about the long-term prospects and will continue to push the pilot/musician route. But, for today, it was really fun to see him shine.

Everything's coming up roses.

Who doesn't love seeing their children picking dandelion flowers? That's one less flower that will pollinate my yard with more dandelions. I do dislike dandelions!! Is it exploiting child labor to encourage them to pick all of them? "OK, Let's bring flowers to Mama!" When they do, should I smile every time and pretend they are a dozen red roses? I think that's the effect they are looking for, but it's awfully hard to turn a weed into a rose a dozen times or more, if only in my imagination. But when I look at their faces as they look for the pleasure and love in mine, I am reminded of how important it is to look often into my children's eyes and give them what they need every time.

Mrs Incredible

Every time Mr. Incredible saves the world, it always manages to find itself in peril again. He said he just wished the world could just stay saved for a while. Is it too much to ask?

The frustration of seeing my work reduced to rubble is one I don't let wash over me naturally. On some level, I wish my dishes would never get dirty in the first place. If they sparkled neatly in the cupboard all day and never required cleaning, that would be fine with me. It seems the boys are constantly pulling toys out. I'm constantly putting them back again or telling them to put them back. Every day I'm supposed to take a shower, but I'm just going to get dirty again.

I have not figured out how to solve this puzzle. It's not that I don't want to shower or clean up.
It's that if I bother to spend the time cleaning up, I certainly don't want to turn right around and get dirty again. This personal law governs a lot of my productivity questions of the day: I want to exercise, but I have to do it when I'm already dirty. The same with yard work. I don't want to practice horn unless I'm clean. Some days I plan all our meals around keeping the freshly cleaned kitchen spotless. I take the kids out of the house to keep it clean. On and on.

And since I haven't really found a routine that works every day or a way to balance my all equations, I have tried to think of myself in terms of what Mr. Incredible would do. Did he shake his head in despair when he looked around at all the work he had to do? Probably. But I think he did go on and save the world over and over again.

So, maybe what Mr. Incredible was really asking for was a day off. A Sunday. (So many of my mantras come from "Sunday in the Park with George". I connect with Sondheim on many levels in this show, it's the backbone for my Blog.) Sundays are my days off. I don't have to balance the equations, I don't have to get dirty, and my dishes don't have to be cleaned. I'm blessed to live with a big kid who understands this day and who understands my need for it. So, by Monday, I'm ready to be Mrs. Incredible again.

The nut and the orderly

Getting Started

This is quite an undertaking for me. I abandoned almost every effort to journal our boys' lives in their own baby books when Jamie was born. So, after being inspired by an eloquent blogger, I decided this is a lofty, yet worthwhile goal for me as well. Hopefully I will be rewarded for my efforts with wisdom as I look at my family from this perspective.