What We Do When It's 90 Degrees Outside

March 2014

Random photos from the last month of crazy.  (Notice the moving boxes.)

With Eva, even a quiet Sunday morning painting session is full of drama...

Kicking Up Drywall Dust

I fondly remember Sam helping me paint the master bath when he was around Eva's age.  So as the week of time between the sheet-rocking and wood trim installation in our basement grew quickly to a close and I still hadn't gotten the painting done, I thought painting with the kids might be fun.  After all the floor was unfinished and covered with paper and drywall mud, and there was no woodwork to avoid or tape off.  What a great chance for the kids to "help" with painting.

Sam stripped off his school clothes and put on TT's old Habitat for Humanity Women Build t-shirt, and Eva threw on a gray Obama t-shirt over her pj's, and we handed them each a small roller and set them loose without instruction.  I quickly realized that if we were going to have enough paint to finish the whole room, they needed some instruction... even if a 3-year-old doesn't really follow instruction.  I showed them how to roll only on the top part of the paint tray and how to make sure they rolled all the paint into the wall without leaving long drips and thick lines.  Sam, for the most part, did pretty good (with the exception of whining that he really wanted a big roller like Mommy's rather than the little roller I'd tried to pawn off on him), but Eva glopped paint everywhere and stomped around kicking up drywall mud dust and within ten minutes I was ready for them to be done helping.  Eva wasn't, of course.  And I had one of those parental challenge moments in which I needed to decide to be the parental authority rather than letting her have her way.  She was allowed to paint for 5 more minutes, then we set down the rollers and stripped off the t-shirts and spent 10 minutes scrubbing paint off fingernails and toenails and earlobes and hair.

Thankfully I had other adult help so a ten-minute break didn't slow us down too much and the room got painted... with only about 15 interruptions because they wanted snacks or had to go potty or had fallen down the stairs.  Hey - we got an entire room painted in an evening and no children were hurt in the process, so I think we did damn good.

Twas the Week Before Christmas

Sam's birthday usually kicks off a week of crazy chaos as we transition from preparing for another birthday candle to panicking about how little we've prepared for Christmas.  This year, however, in between the tantrums about the wrong colored sippy cup being filled with milk (without maple syrup) and the tiny pieces of the Lego advent calendar not fitting (or disappearing altogether), we were able to relax and enjoy some quieter moments with each other.  Every night before bed we thank God for the things that we're grateful for.  And during much of the month of December after we said the first few things (which are always Mommy and Sammy and Eva), we thanked God for beautiful white snow and warm snuggles and friendship that filled our hearts. Every year as we approach the end of the season, it's hard not to feel grateful for our lives, but this year brought us so many wonderful gifts that my heart is full beyond belief.

How to Survive a Cold Rainy November Weekend

Step One

While waiting for breakfast, start making a collage for Santa to determine your Christmas wish list 

Step Two

While someone else is cleaning up the maple syrup and pancake crumbs, build a LEGO house and enact a complex debate between a mother and daughter using minifigs.

Step Three

A little artwork

Step Four

Bundle Up

.

Step Five

Experiment with how both wind speed and wind direction affect the path of a football and a baseball and a wiffle ball

Step Six

Ride your bike in the driveway where the house blocks the wind.

Step Seven

Bubbles!

Step Eight

More Artwork

Step Nine

A game of Life

(Notice Sam chose a boy as his life partner "because girls like kissing and I don't want to have to kiss all the time.")

Morning Sunshine

Createable Stories

 Sam likes to be "creatable" and "creationary" and "creatistic"

Last night we snuggled under the covers on Sam's bed and, upon request, I made up a story about a squirrel that collected 150 acorns and then lived in a tree for winter, looking outside every day to see the snow, eating an acorn and then going back to sleep.  Wake up, look outside, eat an acorn, go back to sleep.  Every day.  Until the snow melted and the winter was over and he could go outside and play with the other squirrels.  Sam then told me a story about a wolf pup living in the ground for the winter, and when I asked him the pup's name, he told me Grandma. 

Now we are in the car rushing along highway 35 ten miles an hour over the speed limit.  We are late because, well, just because we have two small children in our household who do not want to wake up and get dressed at 6am.  In the back seat Eva is singing her version of the ABCs and Sam asks if I want to hear a story.  He says he likes being "creatable."

"Once there was this ant and he was crawling around and he found an egg and then he said 'Hey. This is not an egg. It’s a nut.' So he ate it. And then he found another one and he ate it. And then he found another one and he ate it.  And another another another and every every every day he found another nut and nut and nut. And he kept eating them and eating them and eating them every every every day. Nut nut nut nut nut. And then one day it was spring and he went out looking and found a peach instead. And he said he was glad it was spring because he likes peaches and he wants to eat peaches.  And then every day he would eat another peach.  And another another another.  Every every every day.  Peach peach peach.  And another and another and another.  Peach peach peach.  Every every every day for ever and ever and ever and ever.  Every day.  The end."

"Wow," I say looking at him in the rear view mirror. His story reminds me of the story-telling post I read when Crappy Pictures' Amber Dusick guest posted on another blog last year.  "That was a good story. I like that one."

"I have another one," he says and then he lowers his voice and whispers "but I can’t tell you that one yet."

"You do?"

"Yah. It’s a super good one about a penguin that likes to eat peaches."

"Peaches?  Penguins eat peaches?!"

"Yah. It’s about two peaches that are walking around and then these two penguins start following them and the peaches say 'Hey why are you following me? Stop following me.' It’s a super cool story but I can’t tell the whole story. You have to wait until bed time."

A Survivor's Heart

The group that helped me have the courage to create our family

This story isn't about the kids or even really about me, but in significant ways it is related to our family. This is a story about a beautiful, talented friend of mine and the incredible group that brought us together and the way she inspires me to have courage and take risks and live life to its fullest. I wish everyone I know could read her book.

A Survivor's Heart (published on TheNextFamily):

When I pulled into the driveway and saw the package sitting by the garage door, I starting unhooking my seatbelt before I’d even stopped the car. I had been waiting for this package all week, since the day I got the email from Amazon telling me it had shipped. And as I stand now at my kitchen counter flipping through pages like some sort of restless child, I want to go door to door and start passing out books. I turn to the first page and read a blurb from Pam Houston about Katherine’s humor and her survivor’s heart, and I smile. On the back cover is a picture of Katherine with her daughter, Katherine’s pale nose and chin resting on Josies’s dimpled brown cheek. Josie’s hair is up in braids, and Katherine’s long straight hair hangs below her shoulders.

The first time I met Katherine her hair was just a few inches long. It was a curly mop that accentuated her big green eyes. We stood on a gravel parking area near the compound of cottages our writing group had rented for the week in Pt. Reyes, California. Our writing community had been around for nearly five years, but Katherine had joined us online the year before and she was joining us for an in-person workshop for the first time. A few months earlier she had emailed us all about her clean scan and the anniversary of her mastectomy. She told us all to have a drink for her on that day. “One might wonder if that's a day to celebrate?,” she said and then answered herself. “Hmmm. Sure!”

Read the rest of this essay here.





Katherine Malmo’s book, Who in This Room: The Realities of Cancer, Fish, and Demolition, is now available anywhere books are sold. In 2005 Katherine was diagnosed with Inflammatory Breast Cancer and spent a year in treatment. These days she is cancer-free and blogs about her family, adoption, race, health and living a low-toxin life at HystericalMommyNetwork.