I've written before about Margaret's band Possum Pants. Well, they have a new member. Check our their cuteness:
Bonnie on bass, Margaret on vocals and guitar and their newest member, Raleigh on lead guitar.
Raleigh like Mar, has the heart of a rock star. Possum Pants with their new lineup played their first gig Saturday at the March of Dimes event at Lincoln Park. While Raleigh added a fullness to their sound, they were still rock solid as usual. But don't take my word for it, here's video of them playing a cover of Maroon 5's Misery:
Those kids are 10 and 11 years old playing music and rockin' it.
Every time I watch those kids play, I get a little teary eyed. There's something so magical about watching kids grabbing their dreams and making them their realities.
Proud doesn't even begin to describe how I feel.
Calm, cool and collected ... like I said, total rock stars.
For those who don't play guitar, singing and playing at the same time is really hard. Mar just makes it look easy.
So, now I'm that I'm the mom of a bonafide kid, the really hard decisions have to be made. The ones that matter so much more than what kind of diapers to buy or what kind of organic baby food is the best.
In particular, I'm grappling with the amount of freedom Soren is to have at 6 1/2 years old. Everytime he asks for a little independence, it feels like someone is rubbing my apron string with a butter knife, breaking one tiny thread at a time with a little PING. I panic, then I take a deep breath, let go, and then I'm crushed just a little bit.
He wants to go down the street by himself, knock on a friend's door, then go play in neighboring field. Without me.
I've absolutely said no. There are killers and stalkers and older bully boys and snakes and lions and freak accidents with baseballs that could happen to him.
The other day, he took off on his bike, while I was walking, left me and rode all the way home by himself. I was terrified that a car would back out the driveway and hit him. I gave him a lecture about leaving me when I finally caught up with him at home. I'm not sure he deserved it.
And, after 100 requests at least, we let him stay home all by himself for 25 minutes.
25 scary minutes.
When I got home, maybe walking a little too fast to the door, he greeted me with the biggest smile. I asked him what he did while we were gone. He said he clicked the TV a whole bunch, walked around the house and marveled at his own solitude, then sat back down on the couch and waited. He wasn't scared. He was very, very proud of being trusted to watch himself if only for a few minutes. It was a good experience for him but pretty scary for me.
Then, you think, geez when I was kid I stayed home all the time by myself. I rode my bike down the street and I even walked to the gas station on occasion.
But still — how old should a child be to stay home alone for a few minutes? Walk to school? Play in field unsupervised?
How old before I stop holding his hand everytime we cross a street?
30 sounds good.
But, I also want my son to become a responsible adult. I don't want him to live his life scared of murderers and bullys and snakes. I want him to have a childhood where he was allowed to be free and childlike. I want him to ride bikes with his friends and play baseball in the sandlot. I want him to be fearless, adventurous, and bold.
So, now I'm that I'm the mom of a bonafide kid, the really hard decisions have to be made. The ones that matter so much more than what kind of diapers to buy or what kind of organic baby food is the best.
In particular, I'm grappling with the amount of freedom Soren is to have at 6 1/2 years old. Everytime he asks for a little independence, it feels like someone is rubbing my apron string with a butter knife, breaking one tiny thread at a time with a little PING. I panic, then I take a deep breath, let go, and then I'm crushed just a little bit.
He wants to go down the street by himself, knock on a friend's door, then go play in neighboring field. Without me.
I've absolutely said no. There are killers and stalkers and older bully boys and snakes and lions and freak accidents with baseballs that could happen to him.
The other day, he took off on his bike, while I was walking, left me and rode all the way home by himself. I was terrified that a car would back out the driveway and hit him. I gave him a lecture about leaving me when I finally caught up with him at home. I'm not sure he deserved it.
And, after 100 requests at least, we let him stay home all by himself for 25 minutes.
25 scary minutes.
When I got home, maybe walking a little too fast to the door, he greeted me with the biggest smile. I asked him what he did while we were gone. He said he clicked the TV a whole bunch, walked around the house and marveled at his own solitude, then sat back down on the couch and waited. He wasn't scared. He was very, very proud of being trusted to watch himself if only for a few minutes. It was a good experience for him but pretty scary for me.
Then, you think, geez when I was kid I stayed home all the time by myself. I rode my bike down the street and I even walked to the gas station on occasion.
But still — how old should a child be to stay home alone for a few minutes? Walk to school? Play in field unsupervised?
How old before I stop holding his hand everytime we cross a street?
30 sounds good.
But, I also want my son to become a responsible adult. I don't want him to live his life scared of murderers and bullys and snakes. I want him to have a childhood where he was allowed to be free and childlike. I want him to ride bikes with his friends and play baseball in the sandlot. I want him to be fearless, adventurous, and bold.
My son, Elliott, is a very active child for being a little over a year old. He's always been on the move, but now that he can walk and basically run, all he wants to do is be on the move. He's through with the sitting in stroller's, high chairs and especially the car seat. So, we do our best to keep him on the move, which continues to help his coordination. Last Saturday, after our morning play date at the children's area at Mesa Mall, he took a two-hour nap and was growing restless with playing in our living room, so we decided to take him to Sherwood Park for his first experience at an actual playground.
His eyes lit up as soon as I took him out of the car and he saw what was in the distance and then the kid lost his mind! Seriously, he got so excited that he just took off, running to try and catch up to mommy, see ...
Once we got him in the playground area, he went nuts playing in the rubber mulch as evident from these photos ...
Then, I took him down the slide ...
And then he sat in the swing while mommy pushed him ...
We played and played and played. Elliott had the time of his life and, as parents, Kelley and I were so overwhelmed with joy to see our son so happy.
Sitting at home is for the birds. We told ourselves before Elliott was born that we were going to keep him as active outside of our house as much as we could, and although it can wear mom and dad out from time to time, it's all so very worth it as long as our son is having fun.
I don't know how many years I've been reading the Post Secret web site. But it's become part of my weekly routine. On Sunday, I open my Google reader and click the link to the new batch of secrets presented on the largest advertisement-free blog in the world.
Post Secret is the brain child of one man, Frank Warren, who invites anyone to mail a post card to him and share a previously untold, true secret. He gives out his home address: 13345 Copper Ridge Road, Germantown, MD 20874.
So far Frank has received over 500,000 secrets. From the 1,000 or so he gets each week, he chooses 20 to go on the Post Secret blog.
Frank promotes the site as a community art project with many of the post cards bearing original artwork. He sells no advertising on the site which gets about 7 million hits a month. He does generate income from the sales of books featuring the secrets and from speaking engagments he does at college and universities. He also donates profits to 1-800-SUICIDE.
Frank has many stories where people sharing their secrets or people reading secrets have helped them decide not to commit suicide.
On Saturday, Frank Warren came to Colorado Mesa University. I attended with two lovely friends.
While I read the secrets every week, I never paid much attention to the Post Secret forum or what went on at events. I guess I assumed that Frank would talk about the project and show secrets, which he did, but there was more.
He invited audience members to share their secrets out loud into a microphone for 300 of us to hear.
And they did.
People talked about their fears and sadness.
It was emotional and raw.
Frank talks about sharing your secrets as a catharsis. He said that sometimes secrets can prevent us from being the people we are supposed to be.
I've never send Frank a secret because I tell all of mine. But bearing witness to those secrets was humbling and profound. The feeling inside that giant ballroom was full of compassion and understanding. It felt like we were a tiny community of people who wanted to share and help each other. After one woman shared her secret, another audience member walked half way across the ballroom to give her a hug. I've never experienced anything like that before.
Back in late February when everybody was complaining that it was cold and too early to garden, we started gardening in our front yard.
For some reason, every thinks you have to wait until May to start the garden. I always say I've already got my peas and beans and spinach in ground, then I hear some unsolicited advice about how it will freeze, and then I ignore it. We always start a spring garden full of cold weather vegetables, both in the fall and the spring, which extends our gardening enjoyment by two months on both sides of the winter.
This year's spring garden is in our front yard.
I know, it's kind of low-brow to garden in your front yard. But, there are chickens in my backyard who will devastate anything green, or red, or purple, that they can get their little beaks into. We're working on fencing a backyard garden space for the summer garden. Since our neighbors seem rather hoity-toity retired lawyers and such, we thought it a good idea to make our front yard garden as visually appealing as possible.
Also, I gotta confess that this actually not my garden. It's entirely the effort of my hubby. I'm in charge of another front yard space that I filled with Colorado wild flowers. If it isn't edible, he's not interested, but together we make a pretty nice potager. Also, I'm in charge of harvest storage.
He's also interested in square foot gardening which uses raised beds to produce the biggest yields of vegetables in small spaces. Here he planted cabbages, bok choy, broccoli and cauliflower in his first raised bed. Just next to that are four decorative pots filled with early girl tomatoes. We're taking a chance the last freeze is over. If not, they can easily be moved inside.
And, right outside the front door, he made another box just for me filled with kitchen herbs. They say you should always plant herbs with easy access.
I'm really loving this piece of our yard right now. I think it's front yard appropriate but still very functional. Can't wait to show it again when I'm eating peas and tomatoes and you'all are just getting started.
How are our seedlings you ask? Some are crazy big. Check it out:
We've since learned that it isn't necessary to start green beans inside because they germinate in about 43 seconds and grow to this big in about an hour. OK, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but still. Lookit those beans they are huge.
Our cucumbers and zucchini are also doing really well, too. I hope they don't feel bad because they aren't as big and beans. I don't want sad, depressed squash and cukes. Those beans are a hard act to follow.
The basil and tomatoes are still little, but we've got tons of each and the chives (or perhaps green onions — our labeling system failed us, mostly because we didn't label everything) just popped up.
The heated germination station has been kind of hit and miss. The hearty green beans are the only thing that would grow in the center section. We had more luck with the things around the edges. I think it was too warm for them.
The directions say to use a digital thermometer to keep it at a steady temperature. We didn't ever take its temperature. Wonder what went wrong.
Ben wrote a sentence a few weeks ago that I completely understood. He said something to the effect that he had been waiting his whole life to see that remarkable moment when Elliott took his first steps.
There are a lot of parenting moments that I daydreamed about YEARS before I had kids. I wondered what that would feel like to see a child walk for the first time or lose their first tooth.
One of those big daydreams for me was to see my kid play baseball. Long, long before there were kids in our lives, Marty and I have been baseball fans, regularly attending Mesa games and any professional teams would could catch.
This year, that moment was finally realized. Soren and Jonas are playing baseball and we are all loving it.
Soren is playing coach-pitch and he's a very proud Beaver. (I still can hardly say that with a straight face because I'm still a child myself.)
This pic was taken just prior to his first game against the Gators. Isn't he sweet in front of his mom.
When he got there, he tried to psyche the other team out by telling one Gator "We practiced three times ..." The kid replied "Oh yeah, well we practiced four." Then they looked at each other, then backed away slowly. The 'hell he learn that?
That game he hit two base hits, ran home, and got two outs.
He was also the catcher.
The Beavers lost, probably because the Gators practiced more, and I had my first talk about winning and losing some. He was teary-eyed.
I was absolutely the proudest momma of a loser ever. I thought he was awesome and it was truly a monumentous parental moment to see my boy givin it the hussle on the field.
Jonas is a T-baller on the CMU Mav team. Don't call them little because they will correct you — they are BIG kids who play on the BIG Mav team.
Here's Jonas right before his big game.
I was super nervous he might quit, given his tendency to hate stuff. But, he stepped right up, slugged it for two base hits, and he even knew which way to run once he'd hit it. Not all T-ballers get that which makes it more of a game of entertainment that suspense. He does have some trouble keeping is head in the game. When there's no action, he's building sandpiles in the dirt.
The best part about T-ball though is just between me and him. When he makes it to base, he finds me on the bleachers and gives me his Rock-n-Roll fingers. Those fingers are so Jonas and they are just for me. I love that he wants to make sure that I'm watching.
Three nights a week, I'm watching, with the proudest mama smile ever.
Watch out Big Leagues — the Ashcraft boys are comin!
Each Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, I pick up our son, Elliott, at my wife's office to spend the afternoon with him. When he started riding upright in his stroller (about five months) my one rule for these two afternoons was that I never wanted to sit at home. We're home all of the time as it is, so these two afternoons I always make sure we are out and doing something together. Whether it's walking around the mall, playing in the children's area at Barnes & Noble or playing in the park, I wanted to make sure he was always staying active, seeing new things and have as much interaction with others as he could.
This past Thursday, I wanted to take Elliott to the new Rocket Park on Orchard Avenue, but because it was raining, that was a no go. Instead, I decided to take my son to IHOP for some chocolate milk, pancakes and scrambled eggs — Elliott has a thing for eggs and what child doesn't lose his or her mind over chocolate milk. So we sat down, I got Elliott situated, ordered him some panckaes, eggs and chocolate milk. I put the children's menu in front of him and, for some reason, Elliott just lost his mind in excitement as you can see in the series of photos below:
Elliott get's his menu and crayons.
Elliott ditches the crayons.
Elliott goes into freak-out mode.
More freakin' out.
Waving the menu back and forth like a rag doll.
Yep. This was a good afternoon with cheap entertainment for Elliott and daddy.
Saturday, Bill and I celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary. And you know what? For the most part, so far it's been pretty dang good.
Every relationship has its ups and downs. The downs are what makes the ups so awesome.
To celebrate, we bowled with our friends (yes, I said bowled. I like bowling ... there I said it), we attended the Super Rad Art Show (definitely the highlight of the day) and went out for a fancy dinner at Le Rouge.
Despite being firmly middle aged, we still can never seem to act right. We got spatter from our delicious shrimp appetizer all over the table and we were caught taking pictures of ourselves with our phones:
As an anniversary gift to ourselves, we forked over an anxiety-attack-inducing amount of cash and finally bought a proper digital SLR camera.
Film cameras went the way of the corded-wall telephone when Margaret was an infant. Since then, we've been buying point-and-shoot digital cameras. And yes, that's cameras with an "s." In the last several years, I've broken and replaced several Nikon Cool Pix (mostly from dropping then ... on the floor at the bar — doh!). I love those cameras and actually have one in my purse right now. I will still use it for spontaneous captures and for casual photos.
Even though the point-and-shoots have limitations and we have a hard time getting the photos we want from them, I've been too afraid to spend real money on a good camera. Bill's convinced me that at 41, I can be trusted to hold and use a nice camera safely. I'm still not sure, but my ineptitude shouldn't prevent Bill from having a nice camera. Plus he got a great deal for a nice entry-level SLR that saved us a couple hundred bucks.
We got the camera yesterday. I spent all night last night reading the manual, watching "SLRs for idiots" videos on the Internet and practicing taking the same photo over and over again on different settings. Basically what I am saying is be prepared! The photos they are a-comin'.
This is one of the first photos Bill took with the camera of the Monument off our back deck.
This is one of the first pictures I took — one of our many pink, flowering flora in our front yard.
I think our next 12 years together are going to be well documented.
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