Re-Organizing

Before I begin, I'd like to let you all know that I have exactly 15 minutes to write this.

I think in a previous post I mentioned that I have trouble being creative when I am surrounded by a mess. This is a big problem, especially because I almost always seem to be surrounded by exactly that. So, to help my creative juices keep flowing and to make my home "nicer" for Charity & Aaron, I've been trying to reorganize, declutter, and re-arrange as much as possible. To that end, one of my recent projects has been re-organizing the "dining area" in my home so that we could get a dining room table. And today we did.

Those gross yellow chairs have been around for forever, and now I'm looking for four or five nice kitchen chairs--anyone have any? The bookcase in the back is going to stay put, but the movies are going to relocate to the shelving I'm putting in my closet, and I'm going to sell that shelf at our garage sale. I think it looks GREAT! I'm very excited. Here are some of the other changes that are happening around here.

This is the butterfly rug I got Charity at the church garage sale. She loves it! She tells me "sitting on the butterfly.

Here is the toddler bed that I will be transitioning Charity to tomorrow (hopefully). I'm going to put it along one of her side walls so she can have the most floor playing space as possible.

That's all for now. Hopefully more later!

Mom (Noun)

What is a mom?


Wikipedia: A mother is a woman who has conceived, given birth to, or raised a child in the role of a parent. Because of the complexity and differences of a mothers' social, cultural, and religious definitions and roles, it is challenging to define a mother to suit a universally accepted definition. The masculine equivalent is a father.

In other words, the definition of the word "mother" is so complex that Wikipedia can't even attempt to do it justice, and Wikipedia is the people's encyclopedia. 

 Facebook is full of quizzes that promise to tell me what kind of mom I am:

The soccer mom?

The busy mom?

The over-protective mom?


Sometimes I feel like I'm a bad mom. I'm so busy, and my child keeps doing things I tell her not to do. The more I tell her not to do them, the more she wants to do them, so is the psyche of the two-year-old. And then, of course, there's the fact that the house is a mess, and at least now it is a mess because I'm in the middle of a massive re-arrangement. And if Charity is anything like me, her physical space has to be conducive for creation or her mind won't use its creative space. And nothing is more frustrating than having the tools to create and not being able to make it happen. 

Sometimes I feel like I'm a good mom. I am tasked with a great deal, and at the end of the day, I manage to have it done, or at least almost done. I take my daughter to the park and the festivals. If she wants to dance, she dances. If she wants to jump in a mud puddle, she does. I am all about freedom and natural results---most of the time. In general, I think I'm doing a good job because she always wants to be with me. 

Last week, I asked one of my students to write a poem about her writing process. This was supposed to be something simple, to get her thinking in analogies and to get her writing, but what she wrote was profound. It compared writing to relationships. One of the lines was something like, "First Drafts are like First Dates." I loved it. 


And I think being a mom is a lot like writing too. There aren't really answers. There are just choices we make in response to our situations. We just have to hope we're making the right ones.

Eat a Diaper!

It's official, my two-year-old is a teaser. She comes up to me with a gleam in her eye, and she says something silly like "Eat a diaper!" or "Eat a butterfly!" The other day, she actually picked up a diaper, said "Eat a diaper!" put it in her mouth, and pretended to eat it. She also loves to call me "daddy," "grammy," etc. It's pretty stinking hillarious. I think it also shows that she's the next Einstein, or something like that. However, she still can't quite manage to get the whole "don't go out into the street; it's dangerous" thing. Check out the big kid:

With her comedy act and my mad skills, I'm thinking I could give up this higher education thing and hit the road. We'll be millionaires before nightfall--what do you think?

In all seriousness, I have decided to do a little performing. (Start running now. I'll give you a headstart). I always actually enjoyed singing when I did it in high school and before. But I've never really found a venue that I feel comfortable in since. Now, PUC's having a "got talent" sort of a competition, and I'm going to sing a Beatles song with one of my friends. If you want to come, and you know me, send me a message. If you wan't to come, and you don't know me, that's awkward. If you don't want to come, and you know me, I understand. :)

Charity Inspired Research Thought:
I'm taking a class on computers & rhetoric right now, and last week we discussed literacy, and how the definitions of literacy (may or may not be) changing. I brought up that Charity uses the computer, and that's true. She comes and crawls up in the "big girl chair," I put on PBS Kids, and she clicks away. Sometimes she may try to destroy my $100 mouse. (EEEEEKKKK-LOL! It's a PUN! Do you GET IT!?) But other times it seems that she's really having fun. I wonder what benefits she'll get form her early over exposure to technology, and I wonder if any of them can be as bad as the "nay sayers" say.

Random Unrelated Thought: 
I was not hungry when I hate that HUGE bowl of Reese's cereal. I stand ashamed. Diet, move back three spaces.

Progress in Oragnizing:
Just so you all know, I...

• Have organized three closets, and I have only two reamining! 
• Have cleared out almost my whole dining room area.
• Have washed almost all my laundry.
• Have cleaned out the hall. 
• Have organized Charity's room.

I am woman, hear me roar. Tonight I'm going to party like it's 1921! :)

It's late, and my plans include finishing the first half of The Mayor of Casterbridge in the bathtub, so sorry if this post disappoints. I just had to get the teasing down! Enjoy eating your diapers, everyone!

The Semester of Twos

I haven't posted a blog since April. In the academic calendar, that isn't a long time, just a semester ago, but as I look over my last post, I realize just how long ago that was. I was so excited that Charity was stringing two words together. Now, she's speaking in full sentences and we have the most accurate conversations. What I mean by that is when I ask her something, she responds to me, and vice versa. I love watching her grow and change. Today when I went to get her up from her nap, which was 4 hours long, she looked like such a big girl with her hair down and her pjs on. There's a toddler bed in her room right now; we're going to transition her to it soon. Yet sometimes, she still looks so much like a baby.

When you've been a student for as long as I have, everything is measured in semesters, and this semester is the semester of twos. Charity is two. So far, the first half of her twoness has been frustrating, if not terrible. :) She's beginning to "shape up," now though, to use a cliche. I think she's just getting more used to her newfound ability to be. It must be difficult to be two and to suddenly realize that you can do things like refuse or disagree, express your opinion, analyze and verbalize. I try to imagine her tough moments as tryouts rather than tantrums. She's simply trying out that emotion or mode of expression. Once she gets that others really don't respond well to it, she'll stop. It's classic conditioning.

Another two this semester is the number of classes I'm taking. I actually type these words in a computer lab on campus. Charity is spending the night at my grandma's today, so I don't feel rushed to get home. I'm enjoying the silence for a few moments. Today was the first day of my first 600 level class, a class on computers and rhetoric. To tell you the truth, I was thinking about dropping it. I wasn't sure I wanted to take two classes this semester in addition to everything else I'm doing. But I think I'm really going to like this class, and the end of my MA is in sight for me, so I'm going to stick it out. The boy I drive to school says I shouldn't be missing church on Wednesdays, though. Well, I guess I'll have to see if the professor will move class. :)

I wish the number of classes I am teaching this semester would be two. Instead it's three, just downsized from a four. I'm teaching ENG 104--not 100 as it would turn out--in a learning community. The curriculum is completely new, and while this is going to be challenging for me, I'm excited. It is a refreshing change. I'm also teaching my private ESL classes, with students whom I adore, and a class at Portage Christian, which has been wonderful so far. However, doing this, in addition to tutoring at PUC's Academic Learning Center, writing online, and working at SADC will be challenging. I plan to face the challenge, and to get a 4.0, be a great teacher, and still have plenty of time to count the coins in the piggy bank with Charity.

Going along with the theme of twos--no one better ever accuse me of not knowing how to follow a vehicle--this is probably the second most important semester of my graduate career because of the fact that it is one of my last. I'm overloaded, but because it is ending. And I go on to bigger and better things. I have an idea of what those are, but prefer not to have it in writing as of yet. For now, I'll leave you with an image of two--Charity's two-year-old birthday cake she got for her birthday in August! Little girl is growing up!