Still waiting on adulthood

I turned 36 today.

Flowers, smiles, hugs, notes and calls from family and friends, dinner out with my loved ones, my most favorite cake in the whole world, and fresh snow on the ground—what more could I want on my birthday? It was a cold and beautiful day and I truly enjoyed it. And I don't feel older. Actually, I still feel quite young. Maybe not physically, that depends on the day, but definitely in spirit.

I remember walking home from elementary school one day with my friend who lived across the street. Her brother was older than we were, making him way cooler and more mature in our eyes, and we coveted his homework. This being in the years before wheeled backpacks were required before first grade to accommodate all the take-home assignments, we were on our way home to play with Cabbage Patch dolls or My Little Ponies or the like, but decided instead to do "homework" because we thought it was time to start being more grown up.

I'm sure we felt very adult that day, and there have been other remarkable days in my past when I've felt rather adult, too, but it's an elusive feeling. Mostly I just feel like an imposter in an adult's body.

I still sleep with a stuffed animal, after all, and wear the bib when eating crab out at dinner.

Best elephant birthday art ever!

Healthy eating

The wind has been whipping around here with a force equal to the weather's fickle attitude. Forty degrees and sunny on Saturday, twenty degrees and snowing on Sunday, a high of six degrees today. It buffeted the house loudly enough to wake both Jon and me from a deep sleep in the middle of the night, and a minute later we heard Calvin awake as well. So far, whenever it's cold enough for us to enjoy a fire and marshmallows, it's windy enough that we just can't.

It may be 66 inside, but it's all of 4 outside.

But for all the weather oddities there is no doubt that the month is January when you're perusing the Pinterest boards or the Facebook feed—a majority of links are for exercise plans, healthy eating tips and recipes, or organizational techniques. I scoff at a few of them (why on earth would I put designer wrapping paper on the bottoms of my drawers? I'll never get to see it), but others have been just what we needed to get our own 2013 off to a good start.

Apart from my Pinterest reading, Calvin's growing interest in nutrition and cooking has really kicked our healthy resolution pursuits into high gear. Two weeks ago we sat down with the revised food pyramid given to us by his pediatrician. He drew a plate to demonstrate proper portions and food group distribution, then planned a full day's worth of meals and snacks so as to cover all the general healthy guidelines. It drove home how lazy we've been, particularly with breakfast, lunch, and snack, covering protein, grain, veggie, and fruit, but not getting more specific than that. Cheese and crackers with carrots and berries does not a good lunch make, at least not on a weekly basis.

That first week we revamped our snack habits, aiming to include nuts and fruits and avoid, for the most part, the refined grains we've often fallen back on. Last week we started reworking our entire lunch menu, zeroing in on greens, legumes, and fruits. This week we target our breakfasts, cutting out the standard store-bough (albeit whole grain) bagel, and leaning instead toward more noticeable whole grains, and homemade at that.

I hear, via Pinterest of course, that it takes 21 days for something new to become a habit. I'm not sure that's entirely true—I ran daily for forty-some-odd days between Thanksgiving and New Years and still had no problem last week, while I was down and out with this cold, reverting to my original habit of occasional running. The first day, even the second, was hard, but by this weekend it was more difficult to run than not, my only excuse being that I'm still finding it hard to breathe just sitting on the couch. Still, I'm hoping that our eating habits are another story.

So far, colds notwithstanding, it has been a very healthy new year. Every Sunday has found Calvin and me sitting at the table with a variety of new recipes (thank you Pinterest) and a grocery list, making out a meal and snack plan for the week that is full of bright colors, fresh flavors, and general homemade goodness. During the week he helps me prepare at least two meals from beginning to end, reading recipes, measuring, stirring, cracking eggs, even sometimes cutting. Since two nights of meal preparation usually feed us for at least four, he's helping not only plan, but prepare at least half the week's worth of edibles. This Sunday he helped make a mostly healthy breakfast casserole that we prepared ahead for the coming week. I can practically feel myself being healthier.

Making breakfast oatmeal casserole

Homemade oatmeal casserole

Homemade mac&cheese for lunch, with a large and colorful salad

Makeover tuna salad stuffed avocado

Project 365 week 3

Days 15-21, January 15-21

Play

Play means many different things to many different people. You can play pretend, you can play a game, you can play at learning, you can play on stage, you can play with things, or play music. I think play changes as we get older, too. When I was young there was nothing I loved so much as to play at being a teacher with the chalkboard in our basement, or to play house in the tunnel of foliage on the berm in our backyard, while now my play is focused more on hobbies.

As an adult, and wife and mother, when we moved into our new home we did not have enough furniture for it, so our front room, ostensibly a sitting room, remained empty except for the piano and a few bookshelves of toys. We took to calling it our play room. It has changed a bit since then—the bookshelves grew like weeds (they now reach to the ceiling!), and we added a dress-up chest, a shelf doubling as a window seat, and now a dog crate—but really we've left it open so that it could continue to be our play room.

There is an etiquette book somewhere that says we shouldn't have the front room, the very first room visitor's see upon entering the house, filled with the things that make the most mess. But in the dead of winter, when the house is chilly and the outside uninviting, the afternoon sun streams through the front window and warms the play room floor. It calls all of us to spread out and bask, so we do. On any given day the floor is strewn with books, art pieces, Legos, or felt sets, and likely a young boy and a couple of dogs, too. That's where we sit to discuss history, run science experiments, read favorite books, or just simply play, with the piano, with dogs, with toys, with each other.

Today it was a building spree—the construction of a pool on a riverside, to be visited by all the fairy tale creatures Calvin could divine, or rummage from various sets, before their return to the castles...and parking garage. And, while Jon was off teaching lessons, for me it was playing with the camera, experimenting with that beautiful afternoon light and falling in love with my hobby all over again. I am still considerably under the weather, so it was nice to lay on the floor in the sporadic sun and just watch the boy play, listening to things those characters said and watching the things they did, and possibly I fell asleep for a few minutes, because I think I was awakened by a spotted pink tongue and a giggling little boy. 

A little (too much?) help from my friends

We are nursing colds around here and have been pretty well stuck in the house, but when you're learning at home there's no worry about make-up lessons, and there's plenty of tea, warm blankets, and snuggles...like this drive-by licking that took place during a serious building session in the afternoon sun.