The mosquitoes are as big as cats.

September is Wisconsin always feels like something I don't deserve.  The weather! Is! Perfect!  Between 65-78 degrees, bright blue skies, a breeze that has a whisper f crispness underneath it.  It's paradise.

Except for the mosquitoes. 

They are EVERYWHERE.

It's not often that you can be outside and actually SEE the mosquitoes flying around your head.  I mean, what the heck?!

For us, September in Wisconsin also means baseball every night.  EVERY.  NIGHT.  And sometimes more than one kid has a game.  We are mosquito feasts.

But!  They can't keep us inside!

What I Did This Summer

Basically, just this:

Too early to think

I feel like maybe just maybe I don;t have to be getting up so early?

And yet.

Our routine is not routine, so we are still finding our way through our days and, as a consequence, forgetting to take pictures.

Pumpkin Spice!  Finally!  Also, shut up, haters

 Fast food for dinner!

 Curls!

 She loves me SO MUCH

 Curls!

 This leftover pasta was the greatest of all time.

 ...buuuuut I dropped some on my way to the car.

Resolutions for the academic new year

I love a new beginning, and I am real sucker for the strategy of the clean slate.  Academic New Year combines both of these things and plus also has the added allure of new clothes (I mean, I cannot afford new clothes for myself-- just the kids--) and crisp weather and and all of the pumpkin things.

All of the Onward Project podcasts, which I love, focused on Labor Day this month and talked about how to enrich our work lives, which got me thinking about my own work.  I was particularly drawn to Happier in Hollywood's episode about weather or not our work should define us. As a white middle class cis lady, I thinkI have (chosen to be) been defined most prominently by my work as a mom which might be why it is so hard for me to let go of the idea of being a mom of small kids. Part of me is worried that when the kids are grown up, I will be depleted because they are my work.  I have made all sorts of career sacrifices and compromises because I am a mom, and I have also used motherhood as an excuse to not risk myself professionally or creatively.  It would be so much easier to just have another baby than to grapple with the reality of unrealized potential.

Sending Dorothy to kindergarten made me think of that 10-4 baby and all the ways my life would be different if it had stuck around, how these milestones would't seem so daunting/wouldn't be an ending.  I'd still be in the trenches of motherhood, a place where I know what I'm doing, at least sort of.

The first day of school, though, I had a glorious work day and got more done than I have since May.  I checked every item off my to-do list, and I worked on my book, even.  I could thrive under these circumstances, is what I am saying.  It has been 12 years since I had 8 child-free hours to work.  This new beginning might be miraculous.

In that spirit, here are 10 things I want to do to make my work day happier and healthier:

1.  Schedule a lunch or coffee date every week: WHY NOT, right?  Also, I think brown bags on campus can count toward this goal because while they don't check a friendship box per se, they are really fun and interesting
2.  Cultivate harmonious mornings: I don't have any on-campus obligations before 11 and am no longer trying to cram an 8-hour workday into the three hours Dorothy is in preschool. I have time to clean the house after everyone leaves for school-- and it only takes about 20 minutes to put everything back in order when there are no little people around.
3.  Write everyday.  I have a poetry dream that I might have time to make a reality.  I WILL FINISH MY NOVEL this semester. 
4.  Prep the night before-- anything I can, everything I can, etc.
5. Yoga every damn day, even 10 or 15 minutes is enough.
6.  WALK everyday for at least 25 minutes over the course of the work day.  I waste this much time staring at my screen.  I need to get out of the office and off my ass and MOVE.  I have said this before and never followed through, but my work day is WAY TOO SEDENTARY.  I think when I find myself drifting off and scrolling mindlessly through Facebook is when I need to get moving.  The Wisconsin winter is a terrible thing, though.  I might need to be a joiner-- there's a gym across from my office and 3 different yoga places in walking distance.  Maybe a winter membership? It would be pretty easy to keep a gym bag in my office and sneak across the way when I needed a pick-me-up, and this might be a good way to avoid the winter weight...
7. When the kids get home from school, CONNECT WITH THEM.  No phone (camera OK), no email.  No work stress.  I will have a whole day to work.  I can be a mom for 4 hours and work again after bedtime if I must.
8.  Bake for my TAs.  My dissertation advisor absolutely forbade this kind of nonsense, but I am an old lady now, so I can bake away.  Seriously, I am so old that even though I sign emails with my first name and call myself by first name, the TAs call me Dr.  What the what?  COOKIES, STAT.
9.   Invest time in things I will use again in future semesters.  Good slides.  Good rubrics. Good assignments-- you get the idea.  For the class I am adjuncting, I am typing both lesson plans and notes on things that worked and didn't work so if I teach the class again, all of that stress will be out of the picture.
10.  Buy the books I want to read with research funds and stay current in my field.  I did an excellent job of this last year and will keep going!  I read SO MUCH bell hooks last year, and if that's not happiness, I don't know what is.

Cheers to the 2018-2019 school year!

Cooper Dennis is S E V E N

Oh, Cooper.

I have THE BEST memories of him being born, feeling like a total superhero when he finally arrived, hanging with him in the hospital, just the two of us on our own little babymoon. 

He was a breastfed baby who GAINED WEIGHT in the HOSPITAL and slept for 10 hours in a row at 2 weeks old.  A total unicorn.  The sweetest baby in the world, so little trouble and so much joy that his very presence convinced us to have another right away.

Then, when he was 9 month old and I was pregnant again, ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE and has stayed loose for the last 6 wonderful years and three perfect months.

He's a total handful, an impossible little elf-- so mart! so sporty! so wild!

He wanted an ice cream cake, so I did my best.  I have to say, though, that the whole project was doomed practically from its inception because I had 3 cake pans, but they were not all the same size, and by now, you know I am way too impatient to do the one small thing that would make the whole project work better like WAIT and re-use a pan or even go buy another pan or at least take everything out of my one huge nightmare corner cupboard where you know what? I could probably find a matching layer pan.  Anywho.

 Not the worst looking cake ever.  BUT JUST WAIT.

 We decorated the table the night before, which is my favorite birthday thing.

 Ben made a funny sign that Cooper read aloud and chuckled over

 We "hid" his bike but assumed he would see it right away.

 Birthdays are for candy at the breakfast table, right?

 Something happened to this cake in the freezer, and I was sad to see it when I SET A DAMN ALARM on a Sunday so I could have time to let the cake sit out before Cooper woke up.

 Here he is rounding the corner to see his spread.

 I thought he would notice the bike right away.

 But he went straight to the present pile.

 And tore in.

 The other kids amused themselves.

 Still opening.

 A book!  Was his favorite present!  He's the BEST!

 STILL HAS NO CLUE THERE'S A BIKE BEHIND HIM.

 Finally noticed it!

 He immediately tested it out.

 Here comes a notably ugly cake!

 Notice that he already ate a giant brick of dark chocolate

 SO SWEET.

 A pretty good morning.

 (Harry did an English project that was darling-- crafting with the dictionary is my fave way to craft)

 I made cupcakes for Cooper's class for today

 We saw our final 3 Buckeys!

 And checked out a couple of new parks.

 Before hitting up our favorite birthday bar for UNLIMITED ORANGE SODA because we are the parents of the year, after all.

 Jack had a dive lesson

 Then harry and Cooper BOTH had baseball games, and I took the little kids to Chipotle at the birthday kid's request

 Jack and Dorothy ended their evening with cake on the deck, but Cooper said he actually doesn't like cake, which would have been helpful to know before I MADE ONE.

 Book club!

 And cupcake frosting for me to close out a great little birthday!

And this happened because OF COURSE IT DID

What We're Eating This Week 37/52

YOU GUYS.

We have an event or a class or a game every night this entire week!  EVERY NIGHT.  GAH.

And the bees are so bad right now I cannot plan to feed the children at baseball.  QUITE THE CONUNDRUM.

Here's my plan:
grilled chicken for quesadillas, wraps, and salads
chicken nuggets and fries in the freezer
Giant pot of chili on Monday to eat for a couple of days
Hot dogs because they are always good in a pinch.

If that's not winning, I don't know what is.

#MOTY

Baking my face off

All I want to do is bake.

I have big plans to make snickerdoodles and chocolate chip and oatmeal chocolate chip and M&M cookie dough and freeze them in balls so I can make cookies for after-school snacks no matter how busy we are actually after school.

I made these the other day, and they were PEEEEEEERFECT even though Ben didn't like them because Ben only likes Better Crocker boxed brownies in a 9X13 pan with powdered sugar on top.  I told him to think of these as frosted brown cake squares, but no dice.

One of my goals for the academic new year is to bake a new kind of cookie for my TAs every week.  I will, of course, keep you posted.