SAHM Struggle: My Purse

My purse is a junk pit. It once was not this way. My purse evolved over time, as my role in life changed.

Teenager: Once I had a purse that was a tiny, tiny thing. It had a wicker handle and was oval shaped. At the most, it measured 4 x 8 x 6. Tiny. I carried cash, lipstick, a cell phone, my car key, and pressed powder. Nothing else fit in there and that was fine; I needed nothing else in life.

College teenager/early twenty-something: I was a bit of a hippie-wanna-be, so I carried a "bag." It was a bit larger and I finally carried a wallet. I stuck my calendar in there for organizing meetings, poetry readings, and paper due dates. It was made from flower material. Still cute.

Mid-twenty-something/newlywed: I thought I carried a large purse, but really, I carried a variety of purses. I actually had time to switch back and forth between black and brown to match my shoes. If I went out on the weekends, I had a smaller purse (again, that matched my outfit) that I stuck lipstick and my ID in. I don't know why I thought these purses were big.


Mom of baby: I carried a diaper bag. If I needed something personal, it normally pertained to the baby, like breast pads. I did not carry lipstick. I stuck my wallet in the side of the diaper bag. I was too tired to care.

Mom of toddler: Here I am today. Both of my kids are potty trained, so I don't carry a diaper bag. That does not mean my purse is not full of kid stuff. My purse is large, but cute. It is crammed with the following stuff:

• 1 wallet
• 2 coupon folders
• An extra pair of shorts and underwear for the newest potty-trained child
• A pair of socks for each kid
• 4 "necklaces" (Mardi Gras beads) that a child discarded at the park
• 1 Lighting McQueen race car
• 1 comb
• At least a dozen bobby pins
• 3 lipsticks/lipgloss
• Lint roller
• Hand sanitizer
• Gas can plastic tube-thing (I ran out of gas last week and had to buy a can. This plastic tube was with it, and I have no idea what its purpose is. I used the gas can just fine without it).
• A broken nail file
• Dead flowers the kids collected at the park
• A name tag
• Crumpled reciepts
• "Club cards" to a million little stores, probably duplicate, that I never remember to use

So now I have come almost full circle (I imagine some day I can carry a normal sized purse again, right?) and have an attractive purse. It is just stuffed with junk.

Add to the fun: what is in your purse?

Financial Friday: Menus

My children have new, free toys: pretend menus, aka junk mail. 

Za got a kitchen for Christmas, which means that both of my children now have a play kitchen. I knew Santa Claus was planning to bring her this, so I told relatives she would need pretend food, napkins, tablecloths, etc. It's really cute and I love that my kids are creative with it. They make dinner, they feed baby dolls and their parents, and they organize their items on the shelves. We have had picnics before as well as tea parties.

Where do the 'free toys' come into play? Earlier this week, Ty was sorting through the day's mail and asking what belongs in the recycling. He came across a tiny coupon booklet (about 6 inches) and started flipping through it. He said, "Look! A book! About coffee and hamburgers and French fries." I said, "Yep. It sure is a book." Little did I know it would become a permanent book, along with other advertisements, in our house.

Playing pretend now has a new setting: a restaurant. The "books" are now menus. My husband and I pick entrees from the menus and our children prepare them.

I like the ingenuity, and the reusing/recycling spirit. Since junk mail is free, it also makes me wonder what entertainment I have thrown away for so long.

Augie

Augie, my doggie, was my first baby. His first-year scrapbook remains the only one finished from all of my "children." He once snuggled in bed with me. I put ice in his water dish, simply because he liked it that way. He was bathed on a schedule. I bought him doggie treats and toys. He went places with me. I spoiled my cute pound puppy.

Cute mutt.

This situation has drastically changed for little Augie. When we brought Ty home from the hospital, I reluctantly let Augie sniff his head. How could I have changed that much in four days? My change was permanent, in that Augie was moved down on the to-do list. Two years later when Za showed up at home? If he could have, Augie would have rolled his eyes. He knew what this meant: someone new was between him and the top of that list.

He's cute, but he still doesn't belong on the couch.

I still love him and I still take care of him. He is fed, watered, and walked. Sometimes, it is with a frown, without much enthusiasm. My feelings are mixed, ones of loyalty and selfishness; love and exhaustion.

How did it happen that I now view Augie as another being who wants something from me? Someone who I need to take potty, feed, and pet? At the end of the day, after the kids are in bed and I finally sit on the couch without a clang from the kitchen or the "Little Einsteins" theme song blaring, he nuzzles toward me and my arm is heavy as I place it on his head. He needs attention, too. But damn it, I just gave myself away for an entire day. To other people. My little people. I need a break too.

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Educational Theory of the Week: Memorization

Memorization: to commit to memory, to learn by heart.

Memorization is a bit of a dirty word in most education circles. It's not fun, and it normally involves flashcards. People (not just kids) struggle to memorize facts, especially if they deem the information irrelevant or boring. So let's look at the first part of the equation - is memorization necessary?

Knowledge is the first component of Boom's Taxonomy, and comprehension is the second. A basic example is learning multiplication facts, a task I loathed completing, but am now happy I know. Following Bloom's Taxonomy with the multiplication tables would be:

Knowledge - knowing the definition of multiplication and the knowledge of numbers.

Comprehension - understanding the multiplication tables.

Memorization requires a bit of both. The first two stages of Bloom's Taxonomy (knowledge and comprehension) seem a bit boring, a bit uninteresting. Learning vocabulary terms? Remembering the periodic table of elements? Understanding bones and muscles of a body? Never my favorite activities. In all of my years of teaching, I've never seen students get excited over memorizing, either. Students do get excited over writing fabulous speeches with specific and distinct words, blowing up things, and dissecting beings. And such activities cannot take place until memorization has occurred. 

Students cannot analyze a frog leg or evaluate the effectiveness of a speech outline until they have a base to rely upon - a base of knowledge. As a teacher, yes, I think memorization is necessary. Not always fun, but quite needed in all classes, at all levels.

So this non-fun, often boring aspect exists in education. Do students rebel against memorization? Do their parents? What are the repercussions of such behavior? Is school more fun, or do students know less basic facts? Please contribute; I'm open to all sides!

(I did an entire series on Bloom's Taxonomy if you want to understand it better. It is a hierarchy of learning).

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Working With Kids Under Your Feet

I wonder why I fight working with my kids under my feet, and after thinking about it today I am going to stop it.

It is difficult. I sweep the kitchen floor, they mess up the pile. I mop the kitchen floor, they get it muddy. I vacuum the living room, they destroy the playroom. I spend most of my days cleaning, organizing, or sweeping. It stinks, but the alternative to a disastrous house is stinkier.

Not my house-way too neat to be here.

It is part of my life and my kids' daily routine, their mom keeping the house picked up. Aside from daily tidings, I also have the yucky bathrooms and laundry-type-ish-larger-projects. Outside, I clear out leaves from under the deck, scrape cobwebs, and sort the recycling. It is not glamorous, but unless you have hired help, you do it too.

Once upon a time, I thought that I needed to keep the kids away while I did these chores. Then the house got messier; as they got bigger, so did their messes. They stopped taking naps. I was going to have to clean into the night. I wanted to read to them during the day. Play board games. Anything but clean with them. It became inevitable that I would need to clean with my kids under my feet.

And that is ok because I can teach them while I sweep, just in different ways from the board games and books. Cleaning with my children under my feet teaches them:

1. Cleaning is real life. Real life is hard and you have to clean up the messes in it. The kids see me sweat when I sweep, and see me figure out how to get marker off the couch: problem-solving skills.

2. The kids help clean. I believe kids should have freedom from adult responsibilities, but they need to know how to clean up after themselves. Ty can pick up his cars and Za can pick up her plastic slinky collection. It's a balance thing.

3. My behavior is an example for my kids. This is a given with parenting, all of the time, but it really trickles down to small tasks like cleaning too. Getting frustrated with menial activities is a poor examples. Shipping them off to the couch when I want to vacuum a small spot, another poor example. Working together - someone getting the dustpan while another wipes the table? Ahhh, teachable mommy moment.

Cleaning and scrubbing the house is an everyday part of life, and I am now going to do it with my children under my feet.

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The Broken Truck

Toys crowd every living space of my house, garage, and even car. My two children’s birthdays are within four days of each other and after one month of Christmas. All of the grandparents are divorced, so that means we have five celebrations for all three events, complete with aunts, uncles, cousins, and great-grandparents. Don’t worry about the math; all those parties add up to way too many toys.



My husband and I take preventive measures against this tidal wave of toys. We donate. We trash broken toys. We move them to the garage for outside toys and then they become trash. Lots and lots of toys out the door.

As my children get older, not all toys make it out the door. For instance, a wonderful friend of mine gave my son Ty a monster truck for Christmas. He broke a wheel off immediately, really within his first play session with it. My husband and I tried fixing it (and couldn’t) and threw it away (and Ty picked it out of the garbage).

I then considered my options:

1. Call my friend and get the receipt, or at least the store’s name. Then dig the packaging out of the recycling, tape the box back together, and situate the truck in what was sure to be a poorly reconstructed box. Then take it back for an exchange and haggle with store clerks while holding two kids who are super excited to be in a toy store and super tired of standing in line.

2. Dig the box out of the recycling, find out the brand name, and call/email them. Play phone/email tag.

3. Write a blog post about junky toys that break within five minutes of your kids playing with them, with a link back to the manufacture’s website. Tweet furiously.

Options one and two seem frustrating and I am really too nice for option three.

So now we have this broken monster truck that Ty is attached to and no real plan, except for our last option:

4. Sneak it out of the house and into the garbage when he is asleep.

We really wanted the monster truck out of the house. The kids have too many toys and they certainly don’t need a broken one. Monster trucks alone? Ty probably has a dozen of varying sizes. When he lines them up for them to enter the living room, or the racing arena, they stretch for two feet. He does not need this monster truck, so we worked to find another option.

We never found a suitable option, and as the months have passed since Christmas, I am glad. Out of all of his toys, he uses this broken monster truck with a flood of creativity.

The broken monster truck always has a different situation as to why it was hurt in the monster race. Sometimes the driver wrecked and other times a different truck’s driver was driving carelessly. One time, a police car had to stop the competition for his bulldozers and tractors to enter the arena and tow the three-wheeled truck to safety. Another time, he pulled our king sized bed’s brown comforter to the living room and made it a mud pit where the truck had a wreck, and yes, lost its wheel. 

Ty has too many toys, toys that are meant to build creativity and wonder. Teach colors and shapes. Form him into a future leader and possibly president. Yet he uses this broken monster truck to stretch his imagination.

Out of all the toys I stress over tossing or donating, I gave the least worry to the one with perhaps the most potential.

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