8/31/2004 12:08:24 AM|||Amy|||Too often a story about my children that begins, "what we did today" is a story that takes place on a weekend or a holiday. My time with my children (and this includes weekends and holidays) is mostly about me rushing from one thing to another, and managing situations rather than being an involved parent. The other morning I walked into my bedroom to find Bear and his father having a quiet little talk about ancient Egypt. Bear was asking questions, and his father was answering them. If it had been me, I would have only been in there long enough to gather laundry.

There's no payoff to this, and it is not going to be worth it in the end. I am the only person in this house capable of pushing a vacuum cleaner or wielding a broom and mop, and if I let it go then the house becomes a health hazard quickly. Still, I would really like to sit down with my kids and talk to them or play with them. What I have started doing to get some unencumbered time with my children is to take them places. If we stay at home, I will feel compelled to do housework or some other thing and my children will see me pass by as a technicolor blur to their television weary eyes.

Monkey is, of course, still awake. More and more she wants to sleep in my mother's bed because my mother watches tv all night long, and Monkey is not especially enamoured of the kind of sleep you can get in a dark, quiet room. She was very sweet at bedtime though (or what would pass for bedtime to Monkey which is the time when everyone else goes to bed except for perhaps one or two adults, and it is with that person or persons with whom she passes the time until she literally loses consciousness and sleeps the sleep of the princess who sleeps on one hundred mattresses but still wakes up in the morning bruised from the vicious pea buried deep within the bottom most one.

I'm falling asleep myself as I write this post, so forgive me if it starts to get a little weird. I've got one half of my brain trying to edge the rest of it over into a dream.

It's time now to wean the baby off of formula. With the first two, I stopped formula on the second day into their second year. I forced them to go cold turkey. With Winston, however, we have continued to give her formula. So, tonight, I bought more formula but also some soy milk. The plan is to start replacing her formula bottles with soy milk bottles bit by bit until she has acclimated.

I actually bought bologna to make Bear bologna sandwiches for school. I'm selling out - I just don't know into what. Probably my mother.

Yep, it's all about the parents. If you have even a tiny personality flaw, then chances are you have rooted around in your psyche until you have found some story (involving your messed up parents) that illustrates quite nicely why your parents were undeserving of the miracle they created in you.

On a more positive role model note, I did work out tonight and I am preparing for a 5K run (which I fully intend to walk) in a couple of weeks. This is the season, I guess, because 5K runs are popping up all over the metroplex. Whatever happens, I hope that my children will at least realize that I tried hard to not recreate the dearly held issues with food, fat and poor genetics that my side of their family holds in a sacred trust.

Wow. I keep falling asleep. I really must say goodnight, farewell, adieu, adieu, adieu.
|||109393062593285843|||What we did today