“Mommy, Mommy! Lookie what I found? Spring and muffins!”

And he led me to some huge red maples…

“Mommy! They are tapping the trees! Mmmmmmmm, maple syrup and muffins!”

And he’s correct. Every Spring the 3rd graders tap the numerous campus maple trees for their sap, and then boil it down to maple syrup. Spring is definitely here. Hooray!!

It’s a lousy picture, I know, but I got it on the fly with my cell phone. Kieran had been asleep before dinner, and he was cranky and angry all through dinner because we woke him up to eat (and also to keep him from sleeping through the evening and getting up for the day at 4:00 AM). He really was a sight with his crazy messed-up curly bedhead, spaghetti sauce stained shirt, and a face tear-stained from a reprimand delivered for throwing food at the dinner table. We all ate quickly while keeping an eye out for flying tortellinis.

Any experienced parent knows those kinds of dinners – the ones where the best thing to do is end the meal as quickly as possible, preferably before someone gets injured by a flying fork. And tonight I really thought that we were going down the road to the Witching Hour in Chaos City.

Thankfully, I was wrong. And in fact, tonight turned out to be a night where it was just plain fun to be the mother of two small boys.  The fun was started by a surprise find during my weekly grocery shopping trip.

I went shopping this morning and discovered that our usually plain Jane grocery store had pulled out all the stops for Valentine’s Day. Flowers lined many aisles, and fresh chocolate-dipped strawberries and blueberries were available in the produce department. I bought a small platter of fresh blueberries, raspberries, and strawberries, and then asked the produce clerk to add some of the chocolate-dipped berries. Anticipating happy smiles at a happy family dinner, I made my way home with the chocolates safely tucked up front with me instead of leaving it in the back where a falling milk carton could crush it.

Then, as is often the case with daydreams, real life intruded, this time in the form of Mr. Cranky, age 2.5 years. Our usually sunny and hug-crazy Kieran woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. He was cranky and touchy for much of the day, and to make matters worse, he decided that he would refuse most offers of food. By late afternoon he was tired, and a stop for a quick nursing session ended up as a nap.

By dessert time, Kiri was clearly a tired, tired, tired boy, and he barely managed a smile when we brought out the chocolate. He ate some of the fresh berries, and was about to start throwing food again when Liam handed him a chocolate dipped blueberry. He popped it into his mouth. His face lit up at the first bite, and the tears stopped. It soon became obvious that the usual sweet and huggy Kieran was back amongst us. After eating some more berries and a bit more chocolate his recovery was complete. He hugged his dog, and then turned to hug me. After that, he disappeared upstairs in search of more huggable people.

And now my children have learned a Big Important Life Lesson – sometimes a bit of chocolate and some hugs can dry more tears than can a box of tissues.

Happy Valentine’s Day, Everyone!

]]> http://menageriehouse.com/2010/02/15/happy-valentines-day-2/feed/ 2 liesl 0214101803a http://menageriehouse.com/2009/09/17/thank-you/ http://menageriehouse.com/2009/09/17/thank-you/#comments Fri, 18 Sep 2009 02:33:20 +0000 lieslf http://menageriehouse.com/?p=659 ]]> I was so belated with this thank-you that I actually delayed myself even further by second-guessing myself about whether or not it was silly to even post it at this late date. But then I thought about how the world needs as much in the way of politeness and good intentions as it can get. So here we go (before I can find a way to delay this any more!)-to Karen over at Nine Texans, thank you so much for presenting me with this sweet little prize:

When I started my blogging career back in 2005, I was a mother of one toddler and was home without adult conversation way too much. But because of the aforementioned toddler I was able to get a decent amount of computer time during afternoon naptime. So when my mind got a bit over-fuzzy I would hop online and find out more about the world in general and the world of parenting in particular by reading mommy blogs and writing in my own. I made many real-life and Internet friends this way, learned a lot of interesting things, and became part of a larger community of women connected by keyboards and monitors. I was finding true support in the virtual company of mommy bloggers, and by reading their posts and exchanging e-mails with them I began to think of many of them as the sisters I had never had by birth.

Then, one day, along came Karen with her award, and I realized that others must feel much like I do about the sisterhood of mommy bloggers. Thank you, Karen, both for being for one of my virtual sisters and for honoring me with the knowledge that somehow I am making the world a bit better for another mom.

And with that, I am going to pass this on to three of my blogging sisters-Chichimama, Christy, and Noelle. All three of these ladies are moms, but each is in a different stage of the parenthood journey, and each lives geographically quite far from the others. Despite these differences, though, the themes that run though their writings are familiar in that the events described could easily or actually have happened to me in my parenting journey. We support each other by the kinship of shared experience. Go, Sister Bloggers!

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While we’re here, I’m going to tackle a meme. It’s been around for a while-I’ve seen it as “Around the World in 80 Clicks” and under a couple of similar names. This version came from HBM (one of the best Mommy Bloggers, imho, and one I used to read religiously back in the days of one toddler and lots of screen times), by way of the lovely K3 over at A Mother Is Born. It aims to unite and introduce Mommy Bloggers from around the world through the shared experience of motherhood.

My job under the rules of this meme is to list five reasons I love motherhood. And it’s hard to pick only five, so I went with the first five that randomly popped into my head:

1. Motherhood is healing, and leads to personal growth. Before I had children, it was fairly easy to keep one leg firmly rooted in adolescence and hold grudges against the few people who had hurt me over the years. But it’s not a good idea to parent from a position of anger, and eventually all parents find themselves in a situation where they have to explain to an angry child why whacking the guy who threw sand in his or her face is not only not allowed, it’s also a bad idea on many levels.

2. To mother a child is to truly love. Again, I didn’t get this before the boys came along. But once you have welcomed sunrise with the small person who has spent the wee hours of the morning puking and pooping, sometimes all over the nearest desperately worried parent, and that sunrise has come with fever breaking and the child smiling as brightly as the sun, well, that is to know love.

3. Upper body workout without the expense of a gym membership. My body has never been as well-toned as my arms have been recently after a few years of slinging small children in and out of car seats.

4. Children provide a ready-made excuse to stay home when you don’t want to go out. All it takes is a missing babysitter or a slight fever and you can escape any unwanted social obligations without any guilt whatsoever.

5. Children are beautiful and cheerful. Waking up every morning to those two truths is a gift. Even if the beautiful, cheerful face is happy and alert at the crack of dawn.

So there you go-five reasons why parenthood is just plain great. Keep them in mind as one never knows when inspiration will be needed. I reminded myself of these five truths early this morning when an enthusiastic 5-year-old sweetly inquired, “Mommy? Are you awake? Is it time to get up? I want to get up so I can go to school early and play with with my friends. And can I wake Kieran up so he can play with me? Please? Pretty please? Pretty please with an astronaut on the top?”

And now the idea is that those I name below will each list their five favorite things about motherhood, and will then pick at least two of their favorite (old and/or new favorites are equally eligible) Mommy Bloggers, one from within her home country and one from beyond its borders, and pass the meme to them. I am picking two wonderful bloggers for this meme. Both ladies live very different lives but share some common parenting philosophy, and I think that to know their most-loved things about motherhood would be a real treat indeed. So, to the Awesome KateKiwi and the lovely Karen, I hope you both enjoy thinking about the joys that motherhood brings to you.