The Fresh Beat Band! zOMG!

Last night was the big night-- the one the kids have been waiting for since June when we bought the VIP Party Package to see the Fresh Beat Band in concert.

Look!  There we are with Shout! Marina! Kiki! and Twist!

We have been watching the Fresh Beats since their pilot episode when they were called the Jump Arounds and their first season when there was a different much older Marina, so you can imagine our excitement about seeing them for realz.  From the 4th row of the orchestra pit. (Harry later demanded to know why we didn't have a box.  His friend from school, who was in the second row, asked why she wasn't in the very front.  Kids these days.)

(also, do you like my scarf?  My friend Jamie made it, and I love it and it smells like cloves.  You should buy one of her beautiful scarves or other knits at her Etsy shop Jamie Sierra Knits)

We started our night where we ended it:  At Potbelly.  (Seriously, we returned after the show for a second round of Oreo shakes for the kids because we planned to hit Jamba Juice for a post-show treat, but it was closed.  Trust me when I tell you the return trip was necessary). Because we didn't have the baby with us, we could sit on the tall chairs and watch all the students and hipsters walk by the window. (Jack insisted on wearing a tie-- he was beyond excited).

As soon as we got to the theater, we got necklaces and wristbands for the post-show party.  I was so glad Harry and Jack got some merch (and posters!  that the Fresh Beats did not sign even though we were promised autographs.  Apparently, they got to the theater and said no autographs, which made me laugh to myself for a few minutes about their other demands.  Twist seems kind of freaky-- I bet his dressing room requests extend beyond only blue M&Ms) because I was determined to NOT BUY A DAMN THING at the show.  Not even a rock star jacket, much to Harry's chagrin.  Not even a glow stick, much to their combined shock and horror.

Jack was blown away.  Like could not believe how awesome it was that we were mere feet away from the Beats (as their back up dancers called them at the after party).  He screamed like a girl meeting the Beatles.  It was so adorable I cried a little.

Harry did his best McKayla Maroney impression.

Losing his damn mind.

Still not impressed.

At intermission.  Where I made them get drinks from the drinking fountain instead of schlepping all the way into the lobby for $10 water.  (This would have been totally different were I not pregnant because they had martinis).

Jack at the after party on the dance floor.  The Fresh Beats' back up dancers came to the party before the principles and taught all the kids a Fresh Beat dance.

Jack also loved  playing with the inflatable instruments.  Harry was still way too cool-- he decorated a foam star and reproachfully drank 3 complimentary water bottles and stayed by the pretzel table.

Cooper clearly had a great time hanging out with Ben, who selflessly volunteered to stay home with the baby way back when we bought the tickets, even though I assured him we could get a sitter.  He's such a giver.

Harry and Jack stayed up way too late last night and were crabby as hell this morning.  But Harry rallied because it was crazy hair day!  You can''t see it in this picture, but the other side of his head is electric blue. Tonight, we are going to press our luck with another late night because we have a PTO-sponsored Halloween party at school.  I predict costumes, popcorn, gatorade, and tantrums.  SO FUN.

Writing again.

It's no secret that I found graduate school to be totally demoralizing.  Not the whole thing, but the end there with the dissertation defense was pretty terrible.  I certainly could not imagine living anymore of my life under the shadow of a deadline.  The tenure clock made me want to vomit, and I was happy to have my academic staff position-- my dream job, really, a teaching job at the R1 I loved.  No pressure to publish.  Plenty of time to be with my family.  The opportunity to attend great lectures and talk with smart people whenever I want.  Life in the town that I have come to adore.  And just to be clear:  I still love my job and all of those things.  But lately, I have also been curious about what it might feel like to write again.  Not blogs and shitty novels in the month of November, but my scholarship.  The stuff I devoted years of my life to collecting and analyzing.

For awhile after I defended, I could not look at the desktop folder with my chapter drafts.  I shoved my archival research into the darkest corner of my basement.  The hardbound copies of my dissertation came, and I put them on the top shelves in my closet.  I submitted a chapter to a writing workshop group and then had an anxiety attack and did not make the trip to attend the workshop.

I watched friends graduate and publish books and move to new cities.  I greeted class after class of new grad students who assumed that I didn't have a PhD because I am not a professor.  I sometimes clicked on a chapter file or two.  One day I printed my favorite one out and carried it in my bag for 3 or 4 weeks like I was going to read it.

Last week, I attended a department colloquium about publishing articles aimed at grad students.  The main theme was get your stuff out the door.

This week, I started to do just that.

I am writing again, and it feels nice. 

I remember my process, the pre-writing, the writing, the shame spiral, the revision.

I remember being an undergraduate smoking cigarettes and writing shitty poetry I thought was beautiful.  Sometimes I want to go back in time and shake the undergrad me by the shoulders and say "Why the hell are you getting so fat?  Don't you know you'll never be this young and lovely ever again?"  Lately, though, I want to be her again for a few days, worrying about line breaks and relishing the wight of words without really understanding their significance.  She was not afraid to fail gloriously, took a class with a big time poet and wrote a terrible paper about a single word in a poem (avuncular) and always read her work out loud when the poet asked for volunteers.  She blithely entered writing contests-- and won them-- but didn't care when she lost (those assholes didn't know poetry).  She was too dumb to know all she didn't know, and I'd love to be that blissful again.

But for now, I am writing.

I've been teaching rhetorical criticism to juniors and seniors for 3 years, know all the critical methods, can recite scholarly conversations verbatim.  I should feel like I know what I'm talking about, but instead I am that nervous graduate student in a conference room, the one who had babies instead of going on the job market, who couldn't find her thesis sentence in her dissertation defense if her life depended on it (and it did, kind of), who told her nervous self that if she could make it through this next hour, she'd never have to do anything academic again.

Well, shit.  We've been in the third person for awhile, huh?

I'm writing again.  I have some anxiety about it.  Clearly.

New Computer

I got my new computer! It was waiting for me at the office today, which meant I had a MacBook, a MackBook Pro, an iMac, an iPad, and an iPhone in my office. Slightly obnoxious.

It's really big, which I love in terms of the keyboard but kind of hate because it weighs over 5 pounds and gets hot.

On the plus side, I have space to upload pictures again!

Here's Jack practicing his picture day smile

Here's Harry sporting an old lady bouffant, which is apparently what happens when I blow dry his hair, which I had to do because the kids are shamefully overdue for hair cuts.  Not Cooper.  We trimmed his baby mullet after bath a few weeks ago, and he looks normal.

The other two clowns, though, are slated to see my stylist a week from Wednesday, the same day we find out if this baby is a boy or a girl.

Cooper has been working on spoon feeding.

We're feeling good around here.  2 kids in hockey, 2 in karate, basketball and gymnastics and Spanish and soccer for Harry.  In other words, we're busy.

And gearing up for NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo-- who's with me?

Also, loving Homeland and Revolution-- best shows on TV.

And the debates?!  zOMG-- can't wait for tomorrow.

Stop the presses! I'm in a good mood!

Even though I am STILL working on my IRB proposal that should have been off my desk a month ago and even though my computer's start up disk is too full for me to upload a single picture, including the cute ones I took of the kids practicing their picture day smiles this morning, I am in an uncharacteristically good mood.

For one thing, I am working on that IRB proposal in a coffee shop where I am enjoying a grilled cheese sandwich, side of greens, and a delicious mango italian soda.  For another, I have been hoarding university research funds a couple of years and have ordered a custom-built MacBook Pro that should arrive soon.  I cannot WAIT to have it for class-- look out Keynote, here I come-- and hopefully for 2 talks I have coming up in the next couple of months.  The luxury of a computer with enough hard drive space to save files!  A computer that doesn't make a weird mechanical stuttering noise for 15 seconds by the clock every time I open it!  A computer whose case is not almost unhinged that actually closes and goes to sleep!

I also spent the morning at Little Gym and in Harry's class.  I saw Cooper overcome his fear of the air track (So weird-- my kids have always loved the air track, and I have always side-eyed the moms whose kids did not like to bounce or were sensitive to the air noise.  AND THEN I HAD THAT KID) this morning-- he was so proud of his forward roll and his silly little jumps.  And the first graders!  My god were they cute!  Some of the kids were in kindergarten with Harry, and they have grown up o much.  I know Harry has too, but I see him everyday, so his maturity (ha!) doesn't shock me the way it does with kids I haven't seen since June.  I am so happy to be in his classroom every week and performing room mom duties-- it is something I always assumed I would do when I had my own kids, and here I am, doing it.

On the academic front, I have stopped procrastinating.  It's crazy.  When papers come in, I grade them.  When I have to fill out boring paperwork, I do it.  When it is time to sit down and write, that's what I do.  No more shame spiral step of the creative process, and absolutely no work hanging over my head, despite the 500 different balls I am juggling right now.  So liberating.

Add in chilly fall weather, maternity skinny jeans, a basket of honey crisps on the kitchen counter, a kicking 17-and-a-half-week fetus, husband at home making meatloaf, and a tummy that is starting to look pregnant, not just blobby, and today is pretty awesome. 

So! Many! Pictures!

I got another new phone that is not an iPhone 5 on Thursday because the wind blew my dress over my head on my way from my office to the parking garage, and in my rush to cover myself, I dropped it on the ground and it shattered into a million pieces.  I had Apple Care, so it wasn't a huge deal-- but it's never fun to take Cooper anywhere in his stroller that he he despises.  I got a huge dorky phone case, so hopefully (?) this will be my last phone shattering experience (the previous one happened on August 15).

We've had an otherwise lovely week.  Want to see it?  Here it goes.

Harry's teacher sends home a weekly newsletter, and this week, she talked about doing math at home, telling us that the class is working on visual representations to "how many" or "how many more" questions.  To work on this skill at home, she suggested we take a nature walk, collect leaves, and graph them.  The she said, "But I am sure you are already doing things like that everyday."  Um?  No.  Never, really.  BUT WE TOTALLY DID.

I love the way he spells and talks.  Leeth Grath.

Cooper helped me unload the dishwasher.

Harry and jack wanted to make their own dinner.  I said go for it.

Cooper climbed in to help, abandoning the shoes he'd been dragging all over to walk around with a piece of bread that fell out of the wrapper while my little sandwich artists were hard at work.

Yum?

The Potbelly craving has returned.  Cooper and Jack are always willing lunch dates.

I had to wake him up from his nap, and he was still pacified, warm, and primate-like.

At the freezing pumpkin farm today, they joined some scarecrows.

Ben had a Field of Dreams moment

This was totally going to be MY PERFECT PUMPKIN, but when I ran to it to take this picture, I noticed the back was flat and moldy.

Don't let Cooper fool you, this is MY NEW PERFECT PUMPKIN.  I am going to paint it black (saw it in Family Circle-- so cool), so the green streaks are okay with me-- it has the best stem ever!

Jack fell in love with this 70-pounder, so the little pumpkin heads helped Ben load it into the wagon

Aren't they helpful?

Downed by a vine-- he didn't mind at all, but he got FILTHY.

Jack kissed this pumpkin and called it a dream come true

Cooper was seriously bothered that he could not pull the wagon.  Jack began to contemplate how many pumpkin seeds he has to scrape out of that sucker.

Me and the pumpkin heads and our five awesome pumpkin (128 pounds of awesome pumpkins)

Next year, we will have enough family members to fill every window of this bus, but this year, only Jack was a good sport.

The three amigos

 Oh yeah!  We finally decorated our bedroom, which has been totally bare since we moved in last June, 16 months ago!  Over winter break, we are making over 3 kid rooms, so we knew it was now or never for our sad, empty bedroom.  Thanks to a quick trip to Pottery barn for bedding, Pier One for art, our front hallway for some shelves, our storage room for a second night stand, and our guest room for a bookshelf, our room finally has a little color.  I'd like to say that we spent the last 16 months cultivating pin boards and finding special treasures that truly represented our lives, but we went to a couple of stores and bought whatever we could grab before Cooper started screaming after I searched "bedroom" on Pinterest over morning coffee.  Magical and special.

Bed and new old night stand and finally!  a picture!  Also, when I opened this night stand in storage, I found a bag of pumpkin carving tools-- kismet.

Purloined shelves and more! pictures!

Stolen book self that we have nothing on because Cooper will DESTROY it

Cute little owl picture (that I have since moved to the wall beside the dresser)

Dresser with less crap on it and a picture that I swapped with the owls

It's so nice to walk in this room and see something besides bare.  Ben is right now hanging a new picture in our newly empty hallway.  I'd take a picture, but instead, I think I will relax in the post-kid-bedtime quiet and enjoy my new, more grown-up space.  And scope Family Circle for more pumpkin decorating ideas. BECAUSE I AM SO COOL.

Over Scheduled

We have officially over scheduled the snowflakes.

Not Cooper-- he just has baby class at Little Gym once a week-- not too taxing.

But Harry has a hell of a Monday-- Spanish club, karate, gymnastics/soccer practice (the are actually AT THE SAME TIME, but soccer also practices another day a week, so we're good there).  Then on Saturday, he has soccer games. Basketball and swimming start soon as well, as does Lego club at  school.  Phew!

Jack has karate and hockey (hockey!  it's so damn cute!) but will soon be adding swimming and gymnastics.

That's a lot of activities.  I feel like Coop is an underachiever with his lowly one class.  I gotta find kindermusic STAT.

Last night, we had Open House at Harry and Jack's school, and Ben got to kick off his reign as PTO VP by hosting an ice cream social for the whole damn school.  It was SO! MUCH! FUN!  We had a sitter for Cooper, so Harry, Jack, and I all got to stand behind the counter and serve ice cream.  Harry ate 2 cups of ice cream and spent the rest of the night with the jitters talking loudly and quickly to everyone who approached his window, and Jack called all the people his customers.  They were pretty cute.

Except for their atrocious hair cuts-- but they have appointments with my stylist at the end of the month to get groomed for the holiday season and our family pictures in November, so we're waiting it out.  It's going to be a scraggly month.

Harry showing off his intense pastels creation in the art studio

Jack likes being Jack J so much he has requested that we call him that at home

Jack J's locker

Harry's seedling and his Johnny Appleseed

This is hilarious!  "Whenever my mom has a baby we go to the hosibl."  Makes it sound like I have babies all the time (which, fair enough), and he says hospital exactly like he spells it.  Hos-i-bull.  I love it!

This creeped me right out when I opened Harry's locker-- it was a Johnny Appleseed that he messed up and meant to bring home.  Creepy.

Ben and I finished the night by overscheduling ourselves.  You name a volunteer opportunity, and we signed up for it.  Room parent?  Check.  Art appreciation volunteer?  Check.  In-class helper?  Check-- you get the idea.

I need a backiotomy

Yesterday, I took Jack and Cooper out to run some errands, and it SHOULD have been really pleasant.

We started at Starbucks, where I enjoyed a tall, decaf, nonfat, no whip pumpkin spice latte and part of Cooper's blueberry muffin.  Jack picked out a glazed donut right away, but he debated the merits of a caramel apple spice or a hot chocolate for a few line-stalling minutes and finally went with the old standby hot chocolate.  We waited FOR.EVER for our drinks because a group of hipsters in front of us got iced drinks when they ordered hot ones-- seriously, the whole group.  There was much shrugging and scowling.  I wanted to hug the one guy who accepted his cold white mocha.  Both Cooper and Jack were pleasant and chatty during the wait.  Jack scampered to the back of the store and found a table in the middle of people working furiously.  We ate our snacks until Cooper got screamy, at which point I hustled us out the door.  An older man stopped me and said, "It's part of life, we don't mind the noise. Don't worry."  But I assured him that I wrote a dissertation in coffee shops, and I hated the screaming kids.  That wasn't actually true.  I hated their indulgent mothers.

Cooper has this awesome new trick where he cries like he's being murdered every time he gets buckled into his car seat.  It's SO CUTE.

I wrestled him into his chair and threw his sippy cup on his lap, and we headed to Stride Rite because he is a full time walker and needs real shoes. He's scraping the leather off his Robeez, a sure sign.  He adored being the little customer, having his feet measured, and trying out his new kicks.  I would have taken his picture, but he was climbing on all the kid-size furniture in the store, so I had no free hands.

Here he is post-car seat-wrestling hysterics:

Next stop?  A different mall to hit up H&M for more leggings (their leggings are terrific--only 9.95, resilient, and stretchy without getting saggy, which is more than I can say for F21) and large stretchy shirts.

This is where the day turned to total shit.  I stupidly parked far away from the store, had no money for the gross police car shopping carts that customer service rents, and did not have the energy so close to the lunch hour to force Cooper into his stroller.  So I carried him.  But he wanted to walk in his new shoes. In the street.  In a jewelry store.  Into a toy store that he wouldn't leave.  I ended up holding a thrashing ball of angry toddler, and he kept grabbing shirts off the racks, ripping them off the hangers, and shoving the hangers in his mouth.  Poor Jack trailed behind us with his kid-sized Starbucks cup, picking up sweaters and blouses and throwing them over his arm.  I couldn't leave, though, without my stretch clothes, you guys.  Because seriously.

Today, my back is killing me.  But only when I try to move, so that's good.  I blame H&M and Cooper.  And maybe also baby #4.

In other pregnancy whining, I lost control of my eating and spent about 4 days making and devouring peanut butter cookies with peanut butter M&Ms and eating pizza or 2 or 3 meals a day.  But!  I am back in control. I am tired of waking up full and puffy.  Back on the SparkPeople.  Pulled out my food scale this morning.  Packed 5 servings of fruits and veggies in my lunch today.  It felt good to eat all the crap food I wanted, but it also made me feel dirty.

16 weeks!  In 22 days, we'll know if this baby is a boy or a girl! (Probably a boy, but I'll think girl for a few more weeks).

As much as I would love a girl for shopping purposes, it would not be bad to have another one of these toddling around

And besides, Harry is way into accessories, so I already have a shopping buddy

Oh yeah!  We baby proofed the TV FINALLY, but now we have a huge empty space in the main room.  We are thinking maybe a large console table to have room to put stuff on when we come in from the garage and to old a big basket of decorative balls or a house plant.  OR maybe a computer desk with an iMac for the kiddies.  OR maybe a piano because all of their friends take lessons, and we need to get on that.  Only I don't really like the look of a lot of pianos, and I hate noise.  So.  we need to fill this space.  With something.  A couple of chairs?  I don't know.

We are also taking baby steps toward actually doing something with our damn bedroom.  We went shopping on Sunday and bought nothing, but we thought about stuff, and that is more than we've done in 15 months.  Soon!  There will be pictures on the wall and furniture upon which to rest our charging appliances!  It's just so easy to never buy anything for our room because there are fifty million other things to buy/do instead.  Over winter break, we are planning to redo the downstairs toy room for Harry and Jack, move Cooper into their current room, and redo the nursery for a new baby.  I bet you a million dollars after all that, our room with still be generic and plain.  But we can dream, right?