Unremarkable Files: August 2017

Wednesday, August 30, 2017

This Is Not Another Letter to Moms in the Trenches

It was the first nice day after a long winter and a wet spring, and all 6 kids and I were stir-crazy.

We went to a local park that had something for everyone: a playground for the little kids, rock-climbing walls and good hide-and-seek spots for the older kids, and a basketball court for the 13-year-old.

As I pushed the baby's stroller, I looked at the parents of the laughing preschoolers around us and thought: none of these people were here when we started out.

When Phillip and I first became parents 13 years ago, most of these people were still earning degrees and starting careers, and having babies was the furthest thing from their minds.

I've been coming to playgrounds like this one for the last decade. The parents who used to sit beside me and chat are long gone. Their kids are teenagers now and they've got no use for twisty slides or monkey bars.

But I'm still here.

I'm still changing diapers and picking up oversized puzzle pieces and rinsing out training potties and sweeping what seems like pounds of food off the floor after every meal.

What if the thought of leaving the baby years behind doesn't make you want to jump for joy? {posted @ Unremarkable Files}

I see references online to moms who are "in the trenches," and open letters to "the exhausted mom of a newborn." Don't worry! they say. It gets better! They grow up! You move out of this phase eventually!

But what if you don't want it to be "just a phase?"

Our bathroom sink has had a step stool beneath it for as long as I can remember. Some houses only need one for a few fleeting years and suddenly everyone is tall enough to reach the sink, and it's gone.

Just like that.

Our bathroom step stool has been in continuous operation for the last decade, and quite frankly, the idea of someday removing it breaks my heart.

I know it's just a stool. But I can't help it.

It's almost taken as a given that I want to have more time to myself, that I can't wait to stop wiping butts and noses, that I long to reclaim my house from baby gear.

And I suppose I do, sometimes. When a 15-minute workout takes an hour because I'm getting snacks and refereeing fights, or when I can't get a single thing done because the baby is on a nap strike, I have to admit not having little kids at home starts to sound pretty good.

But only for a moment.

When I think, really think, about the fact that someday I'll be able to go to a restaurant and eat my meal uninterrupted by a tiny person who needs to be taken to the bathroom, it makes me want to cry instead of jump for joy.

I'm not exempt from the exhaustion and exasperation that plagues all moms in the trenches, but the trenches have been my life for the last 13 years, and the thought of crawling out of them does not make me feel relieved.

I never saw the baby years as an intense but brief phase that lasts about as long as it takes to use up a tube of mascara and then I could get on with things. It's a life I'll miss profoundly.

It's been a privilege and a joy to laugh at my unborn babies' feet rolling across my pregnant belly.

To see them look up from nursing with a milk-drunk smile and know that I personally nourished those round little bellies.

If you press me enough, I'll even admit I kind of like the grubby handprint trail going up the stairwell.

Of course I knew logically that these things would one day come to an end, but I've been so busy feeding and burping and rocking for all these years that I guess I forgot.

I'm still carrying a baby around on my hip and who knows that there aren't more waiting in the wings, but looking at the turnover rate in this park has made me realize that everybody's got to leave the trenches sometime.

And the thought makes me feel homesick already.

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The Educational Summer Vacation: Studying North Korea

I had the bright idea back in 2012 to take my kids on a pretend trip around the world during their summer vacation from school (see here for more on how it all started) and they liked it so much it became an annual thing.

This week was North Korea, which, believe me, is not easy to find material about. Also, when my kids chose North Korea for this week, we had no idea it was going to be so perfectly-timed with the "August crisis" between North Korea and the U.S. over potentially bombing off the coast of Guam.

So things got interesting. Want to follow along with us?

(This post contains my affiliate links, which means that if you use them to make a purchase I'll get a small commission at no extra cost to you.)

Monday

North Korea is technically called the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK.) The kids found it on the map and filled out their passport pages.

North Korea (DPRK) is a mysterious country that I honestly didn't know much about before this week. Here's how we learned all about it. {posted @ Unremarkable Files}

Their passports have spaces to write in the country name, the continent, what countries and waters border it, and so on. But my girls' favorite (probably because they're artistically inclined) is drawing the visa stamp for the country.

Of course their creations are a lot more detailed than actual visa stamps you'd receive at customs. This was my 13-year-old's:

The hilarious thing was that this picture of Kim Il Sung (first dictator of the DPRK) was drawn from memory. My daughter saw lots of pictures of him while she was helping gather materials for this week and remembered what the Eternal President looked like.

We started by reading North Korea (Explore the Countries series) by way of very basic overview.

I could hardly have done this week without one amazing book: We Visit North Korea by Claire O'Neal. Almost every day, I pulled it back out to use sections of it for different parts of our "trip." Today, I read the traditional mythology story of where Korea came from, which is in Chapter 3.

We also used YouTube to listen to the DRPK's national anthem and a few traditional Korean instruments, the geomugo and the sohaegeum.

You guys, the sohaegeum is totally beautiful. Being a violinist, my daughter was fascinated because it's sort of like the violin but not. My son, who was less fascinated, could only be persuaded to stay in the room if he could draw robots as we listened.

Ten points to anyone who can somehow tie this robot into North Korea. I'm sure it can be done.

Tuesday

We read about the history of Korea from my new favorite book We Visit North Korea, including the Japanese occupation, the division into North and South Korea after WWII, and the Korean War where North tried to invade South.

That brought us almost up to the present, so we talked about what life is like in the DPRK today. (In case you weren't aware, it's pretty depressing. Life is heavily controlled, everyone has to publicly demonstrate their love for the current dictator, and no one is allowed to leave the country.)

The kids liked this YouTube video called "10 Everyday Things That Aren't Legal in North Korea" (#8 is pornography so if you aren't ready to answer 100 questions about what that is, you might want to skip 8:13 to 9:15.)

And then we watched the North Korea segment from the DVD National Geographic: Secret Access. Long story short: a cameraman tagged along on a humanitarian trip to North Korea and took secret footage while posing as part of the eye surgeon's medical team. It wasn't a kids' DVD, but our 5-year-old was okay watching it, and how often do you get to see footage (aside from government propaganda) out of North Korea? (Answer: never, because it's totally illegal.)

It was a fascinating day, but I have to admit that by the end of it I was emotionally exhausted. Right now I'm also reading The Book Thief (a YA novel about Nazi Germany) with my 13-year-old, and it was just a lot of communism for one day.

On a lighter note, we made kimchi using this recipe. Kimchi is a spicy pickled cabbage and vegetables that you have to leave out for several days before eating.

I got everything at my regular grocery store except for gochugaru (Korean red pepper) which I found at the Asian market in our town.

This 2-ton bag was $5. I love the Asian market.

There is no way the kids are going to eat this. I can tell already.

Sometimes Phillip makes his own sauerkraut using a similar method, and it always makes me a little nervous. Something about DIYing fermented food always makes me wonder if we're going to die after eating it.

Wednesday

Today, we learned about the Korean language. We listened to the alphabet song and got familiar with what written Korean looks like in this video, and practiced counting one to ten here.

We wanted to learn "please" and "thank you" so the kids could use it at the dinner table this week. "Thank you" wasn't a problem, but there's no direct translation for "please" in Korean so we watched this video explaining how to ask politely, which the kids thought was funny:

Next, I showed them this video explaining how to write in hangul, the Korean alphabet.

I told the kids not to worry about remembering specifics, but just to look at how things are written in blocks. Then we looked at My First Book of Korean Words to see if they could spot the block writing.

I found a Korean language teaching site called Genki English that had some free games, so I gave the kids the option of playing a number matching game or a letter matching game for a while on the computer.

They may not have been the most complex games, but they had a glowing screen and no one in this house has turned down one of those yet.

Thursday

Questions about why North Korea is the way it is had been percolating in the kids' minds for a few days now, so we revisited the topic by reading What Is Communism? by Karen Latchana Kenney.

After reading the book, I gave each of the kids an assignment: imagine they wanted to convince a whole country of people about something, and make their own propaganda posters. They could pick any message, silly or serious, as long as it was something positive and not violent.

My 5-year-old went for something straightforward:

"Karate is awesome."

My 9-year-old decided hers would be silly. And you know, it does kind of make me want to get a goat.

I love how the house, trees,and car all have bites taken out of them by the goat.

My 13-year-old decided to pitch mayonnaise to her imaginary country. I'd say she has a future as a propaganda writer if anyone is looking for one:

We wrapped it up by watching some YouTube videos of government-sponsored bands overlayed with pictures of Kim Jong Un and North Korea here and here.

Friday

The long-anticipated moment arrived when we finally tried out the kimchi for dinner. I thought long and hard about how to serve this in an appetizing way to the kids. I decided to go with the recipe author's suggestion of serving it on tacos with some shredded mozzarella.

It didn't really fool anyone and they all ended up eating a second dinner of fruit later that night, but at least one child (my most adventurous eater) loved it and went back for seconds.

We read My Freedom Trip: A Child's Escape from North Korea by Frances and Ginger Park, and it couldn't have been more perfect because the main character mentioned playing a Korean game called yut with her mom.

Yut Nori is an easy game to make yourself, so that's what we did. My son copied the game board and my daughter wrote "Yut Nori" in Korean on the sticks, and after watching this video a couple of times to get the rules, we tried it out using coins as game pieces.

And let me tell you, we hard a hard time scrounging up four unused popsicle sticks after the crafting rampage my 5-year-old has been on.

In addition to the resources above, I gave my 13-year-old America at War: Korean War by John Perritano and also left just a few of the literally hundreds of Korean folk and fairy tales at my library around the house for the kids to look at, including:

Korean Children's Favorite Stories by Kim So-un
Korean Nursery Rhymes by Danielle Wright
Pigling: A Cinderella Story by Dan Jolley (graphic novel style)
The Magic Amber by Charles Reasoner
a big book called Korean Folk and Fairy Tales retold by Suzanne Crowder Han

Our visit to North Korea was certainly different, mostly because it's so hard to get information about the DPRK in the first place! But I really enjoyed it, and I think the kids did, too. They just never want to go there for real.

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7 Quick Takes about Hardcore Camping, Perfectionism in the Attic, and a Really Twisted Thing to Sell at the Grocery Store

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

We made it back alive from our last camping trip of the season. I thought I'd been on disastrous camping trips before, but never ones where we had to flee in terror in the middle of the night.

Yes, you heard me.

We knew to expect rain on our last night, but we didn't anticipate the sheer volume of it, pummeling the tent for hours and hours.

And then there was thunder. It didn't sound very close, but it was still scary enough for us to wake up the kids and run to the car at 2 AM. What to do next? It was a long drive to the nearest motel and we were supposed to leave in the morning, anyway.

So when the thunder stopped, Phillip and my friend's husband grabbed our filthy, waterlogged camping gear, stuffed it in our cars, and we peeled out of there at 3:53 in the morning.

My phone was lost in the mad dash to the car. The rain shelter we'd set up had collapsed under the weight of all the rain and a bunch of our stuff was soaked and destroyed. And our daughter got poison ivy on her face.

It wasn't the best trip.

I did at least find my phone in the car the next morning, though, where I guess it fell out of my pocket. So that's something!

—2—

The 3-year-old was so confused after our middle-of-the-night departure from camping. His internal clock was all messed up.

When he woke up from his afternoon nap that first day home, he thought it was morning. He requested breakfast and flipped out when we tried to explain it was actually late afternoon.

In the end we gave up trying to reason with him and just served him breakfast, which only made him more bewildered and upset when it got dark just a few hours later.

—3—

Camping wasn't a disaster the entire time, though. Things started out well.

Immediately on arrival, the kids looked for a way to make the site welcoming and homey:

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week? {posted @ Unremarkable Files}

Need a welcome mat but you're in the woods? Charcoal, meet rock.

We went with some friends who have 5 kids, each one the exact same age and gender as our oldest 5. Camping with 15 people is so much fun, but it must've looked pretty strange to anyone driving past.

Between all three parked cars, one big tent, four small tents, and a movie theater's worth of camping chairs, our campsite was a regular shantytown.

—4—

I forgot to get toilet paper at the store, so I was running back and asked Phillip if he wanted me to get anything for him. He asked for kefir, a hipster yogurt drink (more on his food snobbery here.)

I was smiling to myself just thinking about what kind of weird party the cashier would think I was having when I showed up at the register with TP and kefir, but Phillip ended up stopping at the store on his way home from work and buying the kefir himself.

Oh, well, there's always next week to play "stump the cashier."

—5—

Last week we had to move everything out of the attic so we could insulate it, and this week we've slowly been putting it back. But we're trying to do it in a more organized fashion this time, starting with all the out-of-season kids' clothes we're storing up there.

My favorite thing so far has been installing a coat rack at the end for all the coats and snowpants (only half are pictured here because at the time we couldn't find the box with the other half).

It looks like a department store. I guess it pretty much is. (Come on down! We have all sizes and genders!)

This is so beautiful. Sometimes I want to go up there just to stare at it.

This is the finish product, though. The first time Phillip put up the coat rack, he didn't use a level and it was slightly crooked, which drove me crazy. Even though, as he pointed out, it was in the attic and it didn't matter and no one would ever, ever see it.

Saying that he didn't want to redo the whole thing is an understatement.

A helpful tip, ladies: I've learned that when making a crazy request of your husband, prefacing it with "just humor me" is effective.

Anyway, Phillip humored me, and now the coat rack is perfectly straight. It's gorgeous, right?

—6—

We ran out of baking powder, so the next time I was at the grocery store I made sure to run by the baking aisle and throw some in my cart.

I didn't even notice until Phillip saw it in the cupboard at home and said, "You know that's baking soda, right?"

WHAT KIND OF EVIL PERSON PUTS BAKING SODA IN A CANISTER?

Everyone knows that baking soda belongs in a yellow box. Everyone!

You can't just randomly start messing with societal constants like that. If people can't believe that baking soda goes in a box and baking powder goes in a can, what can they believe in? This is how empires fall.

—7—

As I type this, it occurs to me that I've spent most of the week either at the grocery store or CVS, but I guess that's the kind of wild life you say "yes" to when you decide to have a bunch of kids.

And all I can say is: thank goodness for the toy cars at CVS.

My 3-year-old actually likes waiting in line for our prescriptions because he gets to play with all of these.

Scratch that, I don't even think he knows they have lines or prescriptions at CVS. To him, CVS is just a fun place I take him every couple of days to play with cars. Whatever I'm doing there in the meantime is completely irrelevant.

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31 Inconvenient Truths About Parenthood

Parenthood is one of the strangest jobs in the world. It's hard to even explain how raising little people can both fill and empty your bucket at the same time.

We love our kids and wouldn't trade the privilege of raising them for the world, but the fact is that there are certain inconvenient truths about the whole business.

These truths leave us frazzled, exasperated, and exhausted. They drive us to hide in the bathroom with a package of cookies at 9 AM. They make us wonder if we're losing our minds.

Murphy's Law for moms and dads is a real thing. If something can make a mess, it will. This hilarious look at mom life and parenting will make you laugh today! #truths #funny

What are some of these inconvenient truths? Well...

1. Right after you mop, the kids drop their toast jelly side down.

2. Saying "don't drop that" guarantees it will be immediately dropped.

3. Saying "be careful" guarantees someone will immediately get hurt.

4. The second you start sweeping crap into a pile, everyone in the house is seized by an urgent need to walk right through it.

5. Babies love to spit up in freshly-washed hair.

6. Answering the phone is like sending out a Bat Signal: Help, Children! Someone needs to solve all your non-urgent problems and listen to a long story about Minecraft!

7. To a toddler, a pile of folded laundry looks exactly the same as a mosh pit.

8. When using public restrooms, young children always choose to pee and poop in two separate visits.

9. Much like an object in motion stays in motion unless it encounters an outside force, well-behaved children continue to be that way until someone comments on their good behavior.

10. You'll never be able to find the tape again.

11. Before you even put away the Windex, your kids' hands are all over that streak-free glass like white on rice.

12. They remember the ONE time you let them do that forbidden thing forever.

13. The amount of time you spend on a meal is inversely proportional to the amount everyone likes it.

14. Kids don't hear you bellowing about emptying the dishwasher, but they can sense you unwrapping a granola bar across the house through two closed doors.

15. Little kids put their shoes on the wrong feet 80% of the time.

16. Just as you're leaving the house is every kid's favorite time to poop.

17. Your child always requests the same thing for lunch. Except for the day you just assume and make it without asking.

18. You'll only find the match after you throw that sock away

19. The minute you tell someone about your awesome system for doing anything related to the kids, it stops working.

20. When you put away the winter gear for the season, there's a freak snowstorm.

21. Your kid reacts to your chicken broccoli casserole like you're making him drink antifreeze, yet he willingly eats a Cheerio he finds on the floor at the pool changing room.

22. Also boogers.

23. Just when you get a smooth bedtime routine going: BAM! Daylight Savings Time.

24. The day before family pictures, your kid runs into the coffee table and gets a black eye.

25. When you reschedule family pictures, he spills something all over himself on the way to the studio.

26. Siblings will fight over whichever color cup there's only one of.

27. If you say out loud that your family hasn't gotten sick in a while, someone starts barfing within the hour.

28. The day after you clean out your minivan, you need every single one of the items you purged.

29. Grabbing a camera is a great way to make kids stop whatever cute or funny thing they're doing

30. The kids wake you up early when you think you could maybe sleep in. If they actually do sleep late, you'll get up at 5 AM to pee

31. By the time a child learns to put her dirty dishes in the dishwasher, she moves out.

Is parenthood worth it? Of course. It's quite honestly the most fulfilling and meaningful job there is. But nature's got to control the population somehow, so things can't be too perfect.

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Why You're Probably Not As Incompetent As You Think You Are

Yard maintenance isn't my forte. Actually, that's an understatement. (Listen hard, and you can hear the neighbors laughing.)

I'm so bad at it that when an old acquaintance from out of town was in the area, they drove by my house but didn't stop to say hello because they assumed from the look of things it was abandoned. We were probably inside eating lunch.

Mostly ignoring the yard works for me, but every once in a while the weed-choked flowerbeds and the grass as tall as my toddler will start making me crazy.

Then I start comparing myself. I list all the busy people I know who still manage to have a decent-looking yard, and I start to feel like there's something wrong with me.

"Why are we so incompetent?" I yell to my husband, quite literally grabbing my hair in both hands as if I'm going to start tearing it out in frustration.

"We're not incompetent," he answers calmly.

"Oh yeah? Well then, explain that," I say, pointing out the window at the crabgrass farm that is supposed to be our landscaping.

"That's just not what you like to do," he replies.

And he's right. If you give me an hour of free time, I 100% guarantee you I won't be rolling up my sleeves and heading out to the garden with a spade in hand. That's just not my idea of a good time.

It's not so much that I can't do it. It's more that I don't want to. And I need to be okay with that. {posted @ Unremarkable Files}

I'm not a gardener. What I am is a writer.

I've spent hundreds of hours building this blog from the ground up and I'm really proud of what I've created, even if it's just pixels.

I'm also an organizer, and anyone who sees my email inbox can tell you I'm pretty good at it.

If I really wanted to, I could make yard maintenance a higher priority. But when it comes down to it, I'd rather not.

Weeding the garden and replacing the mulch will continue to be at the bottom of my list of Important Things To Do, because, well, I chose to put it there.

Which brings me to another point: just because I don't care about something doesn't mean that you can't. I may laugh about not having time for that stuff, but it's not a put-down to anybody who does.

I know some phenomenal women who can grow anything, including flowers that bloom when you look at them and vegetables that taste like heaven. And believe me, when I visit their houses I'm not thinking that (1) they're wasting their time, (2) they're trying to make me look bad, or (3) I'm better than them for not bothering with such silly gardening stuff.

Even though it's not my thing, I genuinely admire their gifts at making their yards beautiful. Usually they're even nice enough to send me home with a basket of their extra tomatoes.

It goes the other way, too.

I may be a writer and an organizer, but I hope you're not afraid I'm judging you for ending a sentence in a preposition or having a filing system that basically amounts to 126 wadded-up receipts in your purse. I really don't care. Those are my things, but they most certainly don't have to be yours.

The older I get, the more I learn that life is a chance to sort out your priorities. There isn't enough time in a day to pour your energy into everything, so you have to make choices and own them.

We're all born with different talents, different limitations, and especially different passions, so it only makes sense that we're not all going to have the same priorities in life.

Making different choices about what to do with your time doesn't make you any better or worse than me; it just makes us different.

And I'm glad we are. Otherwise, where would I get my good tomatoes?

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The Educational Summer Vacation: Studying Madagascar

Every summer vacation, I pretend to travel the world with my kids. They learn geography, appreciation for other cultures, and that they shouldn't complain they're bored or this is what happens.

(For more on how this tradition began, read this post.)

This week we learned about Madagascar, and to be honest it was hard to find relevant books and DVDs. Every time I searched the library catalog I got 1,042 results for DreamWorks' Penguins of Madagascar.

But we did find some great resources, with a little digging.

(This post contains affiliate links in case anyone wants to buy this stuff for a homeschool unit or to do an educational summer vacation with their own kids. If you don't want a tiny portion of your purchase to go to me, for goodness' sake don't click on anything!)