Dear eye rolling victim,

to she/he who found my blog by googling; "love my friend, but tired of her eyes rolling at me"

I am so sorry.  I hope Raising Lucy offered some relief.

What's going on .... a rambly ramble

Well, like a lot of you, my mind, my heart and my peace have been in Haiti lately.  Oh I have the priviledge to turn off the tv, turn off the news, the internet and zone in on the little things that annoy me or make me feel like I have so little, on and off throughout each day but it's pretty intense the overwhelming overwhelmingness of the pain happening in Haiti right now. 

So it seems trivial to complain about not getting enough sleep, not having too many moments of quiet ... going from sleep to parenting, from parenting to work, from work to parenting, from parenting to housework from housework to sleep just to start over day after day after day after day.  It really does and boy have I felt guilt over and over about my whining about these things.  Guilt of course DOES NOTHING for others who are suffering and it really doesn't help me much either. 

Seems like the blog-sphere is exploding with people who are doing amazing things to stretch their minds for the new year.  30 days of nothing, Jayme is doing some amazing stretching each month (so cool!).  Carrie is well on her way to a year (possibly a lifetime) of healthier eating for her family.  

We're kinda on the edge of spectacular here in S. Minneapolis.  We're doing some half-*ssish attempts at health and orderly living.  Quite frankly with our budget we are close to the 30 days of nothing every month.  What with paying off the past decade of decadence it leaves nothing to spend on the here and now.  I imagine one day the budget won't be quite so stretched and I'll be left wondering "should I save this money, donate it or buy new shoes" until then I'll keep the lights on! 

What we are doing here in Casa de Lucita (in terms of goals and resolutions) is:
1. sticking with the making meals for our family (not just with Lucy's fussy tastes in mind).   It's been a few weeks now and things are going better.  She's definately eating a lot more veggies and fruit since she prefers them over the other things I cook.  That's cool with me.  She tries everything and really usually only takes a small reminder to not whine or complain.  She hasn't been sent away from the table  for over two weeks.

2. I have decided to not spend any more money on meat for us.  No we're not going completely vegetarian.  We still have meat in our freezer, and in soup in the cupboard.  We'll still eat it when someone cooks for us or pays for our dinner out.  I am just not going to spend more of my money on something that is kinda cruel and definately unhealthy.   Yesterday Lucy half-heartedly ate a taco stuffed full of black beans (that i had chopped int eh food processor) and brown rice, seasoned with taco seasoning.  Yeah us! 

3. I am systematically purging and organizing our house.  We'll have a big ol garage sale this spring.  I will no longer be bogged down in stuff.  My house is already looking calmer and I am feeling calmer.  Sunday I hope to start working on the basement areas. 

4. Lucy and I are also working on her behaviors.  Trying to work together to figure out where "the line" is and what will happen when she crosses it.  She's a good girl but can be very challenging.  I don't want to always be calling her to the line and it is taking some time to figure out what's important and how to manage it.   Thanks to her magic clock bedtime and wake time issues have mostly ceased.  My child who will fight me on every little thing will almost always walk into her room when I tell her it's bedtime.  Sometimes she'll complain but she is 95% done complaining by the time she gets in bed.  She will go to sleep on her own with no problems.  She will not go out of her room, and will either sleep or quietly look at books until her clock turns yellow (at 7:11 a.m.).  Yeah Lucy!   


I have turned in our school choice cards for Mpls Public Schools and have applied to one charter school.  I should know by April where Lucy will be going to school.  Yikes! 

That's it for now.  Must pick up the house before bed. 

Dance Recital - 3 1/2 minutes of cute

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Weekend in photos

saturday morning we went to Sesame Street Live, a Christmas gift from Auntie Deb

lucy really got into the close your eyes and imagine part

walking to the train

getting her own ticket

she's pretty dang old

look mom, no boogers

actually this reminds me of a referral photo of her, sort of the angle the photos were taken from

and tonight we blew all our money on full price movie tickets.  The Frog Princess was calling us ...

Lucy got all dressed up for the occasion.  Breathtaking.

we loved the movie.  way more then i thought we would.

So um....

So what do you do when your child is "mean" to you?  Uggghhh I do not know how to respond.  Lucy can be a hella brat to me some nights and frankly I am stumped.

Examples:  rolling her eyes at me, calling me stupid, yelling at me, screaming "I knoooooowww that" whilst rolling her eyes (me thinking, yeah well if you KNEEEWWW that then why'd ya do it?)., hitting at me (sort of threatening, but she knows she's not going to make contact), spitting, sticking out her tongue.

help me.  I need specific direction on how to respond to this.  She's 4 1/2 and I don't want to screw her up.

Mid-January Check-In

Checking in from the slightly less frozen tundra.  It got to the mid 20's today and we almost threw open the windows to get some fresh air.  Streets are still lined with solid chunks of rutted ice.  Real fun times here. 

Lucy has been busy getting back into the groove at preschool.  I've been reluctantly getting back into the groove at work.  I have officially turned in Lucy's school choice card.  Additionally I've sent in an application for a charter school that I hope hope hope hope she gets into.  Only 14 kids in the kindergarden class!  The charter school focus is Social Justice.  Every three years the middle schoolers (Lucy would be in 6th 7th or 8th grade) take a Civil Rights tour. They spend months preparing for the tour by reading books, interviewing local civil rights activists etc.  The school sounds magnificant and I can bettcha that they won't have any awful family tree, baby photo, etc etc assignments such is the level of commitment of respect to diverse types of families/peoples in the community.  We'll see. 

Every couple days I have assigned myself to purge unneeded or unbeautiful things from my home, to organize what I have and to put anything useful that I don't need/want in a garage sale pile or the garbage (if it's useless).   I am really actually LOVING this process.  The areas I have completed feel calmer and I am feeling calmer.  I only have a few more areas upstairs to tackle before moving to the basement. 
My ultimate goal is to be able to fit everything I own, in a calm organized manner on my main level or on one wall of shelves in the laundry room.  This EXCLUDES tools, home improvement stuff and outdoor toys/gardening stuff.   

So during this process blogging takes sort of a back burner since most of it occurs post-Lucy bedtime (which is also my blogging time).

Here is Lucy tonight.

Brrrrrrr ....

It's COOOLLLLDDD out there!  It's only the wee beginning of January and already we are done with winter.  We did have a cozy evening together after my first day back to work after Christmas break.  We made bread together (Lucy is great at kneading).  We had home made turkey noodle soup and NO complaining or whining over dinner.  It was just the two of us very peaceful and quiet.  After dinner we played awhile before it was pj and bedtime movie time.  After watching about 5 minutes of her bedtime movie Lucy disappeard into the mudroom and came out wearing my "shovelling" hat.  Yeah it's cold outside and being budget conscious it's also cold in the house, good thing Lucy knows how to put on the layers!

New Year's Resolution

so after today's lunch time fiasco I have made a resolution.  It's relatively simple.  I shall spend 2010 making breakfast and dinner with mostly nutrition in mind (as opposed to whatever will cause the least amount of friction with Lucy).  If she doesn't eat, so be it.  If she fusses and complains she can leave the table and go to her room until she's ready to come back with a better attitude.  I'll be nice about it and ease into the new stuff.  I am tired of the fussing, tired of the complaining and tired of the increasingly limited amounts of food she'll eat without a fight.  Done. 

Here are some photos from today:

helping mama make the "egg bake that broke mama"

scooping out the sweet potatos for our sweet potato peanut butter soup

measuring the vegetable broth

all dressed up for Ivy's first birthday party!

01-01-10

Happy 2010.  It's the year Lucy turns half a decade old.  How does that happen?  We had a grand old time ringing out the new year.  Well the day was grand until about 6:30pm when Lucy lost her stuff ... but she lost it on a different level, way easier to take.  Wouldn't have hardly been noticable if it weren't for the fact that Zep was loosing it too.  Oh well.   Lucy OBVIOUSLY didn't heed my New Year's Resolution for her, which was sleeping later then a rooster but oh well, she's in a sweet (talkative) mood.  I am slowly waking up and soon we'll start enjoying 2010.

Ivy bundled up for our annual sled ride to Jakeeno's Pizza

it was a whiney ride but it was a ride nevertheless

waiting to go home

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

ahhhh vacation ...

Those of you who have been reading my blog for awhile know that my dream is to be a stay-at-home mom.  I always wanted it.  Of course, slightly impossible dream as a single mom with no lottery wins.  Oh well.  When I get vacation time, even if (actually especially if) it's just staying home I really realllly reallllly appreciate it.

Sure it's frustrating at times, Lucy can be really trying and it's hard to come up with a balance of activities for her and down time.  I am not a toy, and can't alway be at her beck and call.  We don't have the money to always be off doing fun adventures.  Still I am so much happier not having my energy/emotions drained one million different ways between Lucy and work. 

This is the second of two weeks of vacation.  Lucy is also on preschool vacation so we have loads of time together. 

Here is some of what we've done:

did some easy baking

some upper body workout

utilized our last few days of zoo membership

did some ballet moves for the dolphins

some bamboo peekaboo

snuggled with Zep

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day

Lucy was sort of sick for both of these family laden events.  She has a bad cough and has been on nebs now every four hours including over night.  I was really proud of her behavior both Christmas Eve and Christmas day given that she had a very disrupted sleep AND was on the albuterol ... which has historically turned her into a hyper - emotionally charged - challenging super-stinker.   She did really really well.

Lucy LOVES her cousin Tyler

getting weary of the coughing - mama forgot her nebulizar at home so she was over due

but cousin Tyler helps her ease her woes

a quick change into some fairy dress-up clothes

the GLOVES are back

Tyler loves Lucy too

a post-present cookie break

reading the Night Before Christmas with Grandpa before heading home.  Lucy got this book from a friend of mine before she came home.  I ask my dad to read it to her every Christmas Eve and then write a message inside the book.  It's a sweet tradition and Lucy will be able to read love notes from Grandpa forever.

after a night of coughing.  lucy gets bundled up for the snowy/icy drive to cousin Scotts.

she's quite the sight in the morning snow

as the abuterol kicks in so does the silly antics

a snuggle with cousin Scott

a scene I came across this morning

Christmas with Mel and Mo

Stole these photos from Mel.  My camera was MIA at the time.  Our Christmas celebration lasted half the day.  We had some lunch together, played, went for a nap drive, played more, opened gifts, had dinner, kids had a bath, had some hot cocoa and watched a Christmas movie. 

a little dress up

bubbly bubbles

new Christmas jammies

Cocoa and Christmas movie

Saturday - Day One Vacation!

Well vacation is pretty much living up to the norm here.  Someone has to be sick or it's not really a relaxing holiday.  This year it's me.  Hopefully I hit the low part last night and will be feeling better as time goes on.  Meanwhile the show must go on.  My child can only tolerate so much laying low. Friday night we celebrated Christmas with the boys.  We deviated a little from our tradition of appetizers for dinner, gifts and a holiday light-coffee-hot chocolate drive.  Instead we had dinner at a Vietnamese restauraurant and went directly to the hot chocolate-coffee drive.   I don't think the kids really got that we were celebrating Christmas.  We'll do better next year! Oh well.  Today I let Morgan and Lucy decorate our paper bag table cloth, and we hit an indoor park to let the kids blow off some steam while I blew my nose.  It was a good move, steam needed off blowing ... and I think we got some energy out!

waiting for the hot chocolate

decorating

the blue side of the table

admiring the decorations

jumping

preparing to take a spin

ready set go

best friends

sweet