Sunday Woods Day

February 4, 2015Leave a comment

Ri and Mario held me hostage Sunday morning. They would not let me go to yoga or run Rocco. They forced me to make a plate full of chocolate chip pancakes while they both cooked me some delicious over easy and sunny side up eggs.

Being held hostage ended up being a delight. Eggs and pancakes and hilarity out of the hostage-takers’ mouths. Mario cracked me up when he got out the crossword puzzle to work on while eating his breakfast. “Grandma Ionno does the crossword everyday so I will, too,” he told me.

After breakfast, Ri did my hair while I tried to tickle Mario as he rolled all over me (one of his favorite games with me). Rocco started to get wild by this time and began jumping on me and the couch and Mario and anything else he could as a way to tell us he wanted to go outside. I informed the hostage-takers that they needed to take Rocco on a walk to the woods with me before he tore up the couch or broke a bone in one of us by all his mad hopping. With a little pushing from dad, they agreed. We bundled up and headed off to the woods, which turned out to be a delightful hour of exploring and creating.
There is nothing better than watching your children use their imaginations while in nature. They found a few makeshift tents made with sticks and fallen branches. Mario thought the trolls had made them. Maria winked at me while she agreed with him. Maria found a stick with a rock tied to to it. She proceeded to tell me that it had to have been made years ago. She let Mario use it to cut wood (when asked why he was cutting wood, he had no purpose – just the sheer thrill of cutting into something). They found a half-enclosed area with a log in it and decided they wanted to work on fixing it up. Ri and I rolled a second log down the path so they’d have two to rest on as they worked on their fire pit. I was complaining about how heavy the log was to roll and Ri chirped “you’re getting a workout in, be happy!”

Mario worked on his firepit and positioned the sticks along the border of the shelter while Ri gathered more materials. I made sure Rocco didn’t destroy their creation. He can’t stay away from a good stick.
I had to drag the kids out of the woods at 11:30 so Mario could make his b-ball game. I told them to remember how much fun they just had so that next time I asked them to come with me, they wouldn’t whine about going out in the cold. They rolled their eyes at me and I yanked them both close to me for a hug. Rocco was up at the end of the trail gnawing on a huge branch he found. I looked up at the blue sky and knew the day was gonna be great.

Pinch me

March 9, 2014March 9, 2014Leave a comment

Pinch me.

My life is ridiculously good.

Sweet, generous, loving kids.

Hilarious, caring hubby.

Warm, ever-present family.

True friends.

Great colleagues.

I am very lucky. Most days I stop myself ten times over and process this fact. Is it my culture transformation work I did at the university? Is it that I’m getting older and with that gaining a fuller picture of what it means to be happy? Is it that all the self-help books I read in my 30’s have finally hit home?

My weekends with the kids rarely disappoint. They are at ages now where they are able to play on their own or with each other but they also still want to hang with me and go to the park or take a bike ride. It’s perfect: I can get fully caffeinated, brush up on world events by reading my Times, and then later engage in a full-blown pillow fight.
And I love how their minds are developing; it leads to really awesome questions ranging from the benign – how are sidewalk made – to the sublime – why do we go to war. Mario points out things he sees in books we read together that I would never notice. Ri continues to practice the art of compassion by never judging others – the other day I about cussed out a young guy who cut in front of me in line at Kroger’s and she pulled me aside and whispered “mom, he may have somewhere really important to be.”

Yesterday was another day where I stopped myself over and over amazed at how wonderful I had it. The day brought wonderful near-Spring weather. The girls took a bike ride while I walked Rocco. We got a picture on the same rock we took a picture on when Rocco was a pup. Ri was very excited about that!

Mario met us at the park and the kids decided it was time for Rocco to adventure down a slide. Their eyes about popped out of their heads when he did it.

I love this picture of the kids running with Rocco. It’s a perfect depiction of the joy of warm weather.

And this is the perfect depiction of Ri laughing hysterically as she tries to catch up with Rocco!

Love love love these beginning days of Spring.
Next up, a trip to the river where Ri and Mario and I used to go on Sundays to collect rocks. It was closed for a year to create a bike path and I was anxious to see what the trail looked like. We piled in Stephanie’s van with the pup sitting next to Ri and the boys carrying their weapons (in case we encountered zombies) and headed down the street. We parked at the gas station and unloaded. What a sight.

The bank where we used to collect and throw rocks was still ready for us. But it was rather insane trying to make sure the kids didn’t fall (there were huge boulders lined up where there used to be gravel). Rocco added to the insanity by trying to jump in the river; Mario screamed like a maniac for me to hold his leash because “he didn’t want his dog to die!” So, I held him as he pulled me all over the rocks while I held Paxton to ensure he didn’t fall. Good workout.
The kids found great hide-outs made of sticks and leaves (I didn’t inform them that homeless folks probably used these “shelters” because I didn’t quite know how Steph would react but I did feel compelled to talk to M&M later that evening to help them appreciate the struggle all people face at times). The boys played capture and the girls played dorm room (whatever that is).

The kids found a big rock pile on our way out and I asked them to pose as savages. All complied except Mario who continued to laugh like a hyena!

In order to get them to leave, I had to promise them a snack at the gas station. They booked it after that promise. The boys got chocolate donuts (they slipped me one in thanks) and the girls got ice cream cones. They were happy as heck driving home.
We ended the night watching my girlfriend’s kids. A six week old and two year old who I had never met… Huh. I was a bit worried. But it ended up being absolutely joyous. Ri was excited all day to hold the six week old, Emerson Lois. She kept asking “when will it be 5:30?!” Mario kept telling me he didn’t want to babysit. But when they dropped off Miles, Mario took to him like sugar. He threw the ball with him and led him around his room to play. It was precious. And Miles couldn’t be more chill of a kid. He just followed Mario and played with whatever Mario gave him. He never cried once (kudos go all to Mario!).

He taught him how to crawl up the stairs so he wouldn’t fall down and how to beg for (and receive) a cookie. He was so compassionate and sweet with him. Warmed my heart.

And Ri was, as I knew she would be, a doll with Emerson. She laid with her and held her and couldn’t wait to change her diaper. Emerson is a real life baby doll!

Emerson pitched a little fit at one point and I had to put her in her seat while I got Miles’ dinner. The next thing I knew, Ri had her quiet by rocking her back and forth. She also had picked up the mom talent of multi-tasking as she rocked the baby and read a magazine – love it!

I sat at the kitchen table when my girlfriend left with her kids and my kids and Jon had gone to sleep and felt engulfed with gratitude. Another day full of laughter and sunshine and good kids and nature and a tired pup and chocolate donuts. Really, it doesn’t get any better.

Nature!

October 6, 2013October 6, 2013Leave a comment

We had to take advantage of the warm October weather yesterday. We packed Rocco’s “bag” consisting of water, bowl, treats, and a chew toy (I finally don’t need a diaper bag and I’m relegated to this). We packed string cheese and crackers and granola bars for us humans. And we headed to Park of the Roses.
I took Ri and Mario there last year sans dog and they loved taking off their shoes and playing in the shallow creek. Quite a number of dogs jumped in with them while we were there and that’s what reminded us that it would be a good place to take Rocco. It didn’t disappoint. Rocco loved being off the leash and running through the damp leaves, picking up tiny sticks, and braving leaps over baby branches pushed easily by strong winds. Mario gave him a run for his money running ahead of him in a mad sprint to see if he could catch up.

Maria has soaked in the spirit of her late Grandpa Bill and her uncle Jorge; she wanted to take pictures galore of all the glory in the woods.

We arrived at our destination – a cascading, slate waterfall with mid-calf length pools of water on each end. The shoes immediately came off and the kids became one with the water – literally. Maria laid on her stomach and immersed her whole self. As I watched her, I witnessed pure grace. The way she lifted her head to the sky and closed her eyes as if soaking in all the beauty of the woods with one long breath.

And then Mario interrupted the tranquility with this face:

And so we moved from spirituality to frivolity with the help of Mario and Rocco who proceeded to flip out when he noticed Ri and Mario in the creek. He is still a bit shy about swimming so he expressed his displeasure with them going in without him by barking like a rabid mutt. It scared the heck out of Mario. But eventually he settled down with the lull of treats and even jumped into the very shallow end. In a hilarious move, he walked right on Ri’s stomach and used her as a log to protect him from the mean waters.

An 80 pound black lab visited us at one point in the afternoon and Rocco was beside himself happy. He played with her for 15 minutes straight not at all scared of her size. He even tried to make his moves on her but she was unimpressed (note to boys, jumping our leg does nothing for us).
Nature brings out curiosity and playfulness. You can’t help but jump from rock to rock and pick up the giant leaf resting in front of you to compare it to the size of your hand.

You can’t help but stand on a boulder and belt out a song about love (yes, Ri and Mario want to be on the Voice badly).

You can’t help but strike a silly pose when mom begs for a darling picture of her babies.

And you can’t help but plant a big ol’ smooch on your brother as you play in the creek together.

Ok, there are some things that even nature can’t make right!

We have no choice but to make this our regular nature outing – how could we say no to a face like this?

The joys of nature, good food and family

May 7, 2012Leave a comment

The farm delivered good times this past weekend. Maria, her cousin and her friend drove out with me on Saturday afternoon. We jammed it out to Now 41 and Justin Bieber during the ride. Everytime I tried to sing with them, Maria would yell “Moooom, please don’t!” Even though she did not want me to sing, she did want me pump my arm up and down when we passed truck drivers along the way. She remembers me telling her my story of doing that as a kid and truck drivers honking away at me and my girlfriends when we were on long trips with our parents. They tried to do it from the back seat but the windows are tinted. I pulled through for them and pumped my arm (and showed a little leg) and got a few honks for them!

When we pulled up the drive to the farm, Maria began explaining the entire set-up to her friends. “There is my pee-paw in the garden and there is Rosie’s dog-run and the chickens are up in their house and the cabin is in the back and….” SHe is definitely at home out at the farm. The girls jumped out of the truck and bee-lined to Rosie. Maria and Alana love to play with Rosie. They throw her toy, play chase, love on her, and exhaust her. Janira, Maria’s school friend, was much more hesitant to get in the gated area with them. She stood back and watched. I think the whole farm scene overwhelmed her – she is a true city girl. However, she did get up her nerve to go into the chicken coop with the girls. And much to her amazement, she retrieved a chicken egg. All three girls retrieved one, and came running back to the house with eggs in their hands. They were different colors, mostly peach and grey-blue. Maria described to Grandma Meg how they found the eggs by digging under the hay (she knows all of the tricks of the farm, too).

Next, we headed to the creek below the house. Meg and I walked with them enjoying a few minutes together to talk about the latest going-ons in our lives. Meg and I don’t get to talk as much as we used to pre-kids because she lives two hours away and the kids are always with me when we see each other. I value even the small moments in time that we can catch up. The water in the creek flowed at a manageable level for the girls to walk around in their water shoes. Maria and Alana took off again, and Janira was a trooper trying to keep up. We walked to the swimming hole; a pool of water less than waist-high where the girls could jump around and splash. It looked like a little bit of paradise with the sun shining through the trees onto the water; the green plants and wildflowers lining the edge of the bank, the birds flying from one bush to the other, and the smell of nature. My dad talked about making a cleaner path to the swimming hole and setting up stones near the hole for adults to talk while the kids played. Retirement is hitting him soon, and he is already scoping out projects to keep him busy!

The kids were soaked after the swimming hole. We took them to the house and dried them off. When they moved to the table, they found sweet surprises from Grandma Meg. First, goodie bags with headbands and snap bracelets and crayons and pens. Second, a homemade Nature Journal complete with a twig fastener and activities inside. Leave it to my Meg-pie – she has a perfect combo of teacher, conservationist and nature guru. It had educational yet fun activities in it like discovering a tree and finding certain colors pasted onto a sheet of the journal (when we were walking in the woods and saw yellow bark, Janira yelled out “I found our yellow!”). She also had pages to detail the day, including writing one thing in nature that made you have a happier day (Meg gave them an example of a butterfly landing on her leg). They stood around the table soaking up her words. What an awesome influence for Maria Grace and her friends. These girls certainly walked away from the weekend with a greater appreciation for nature. They also got so excited over finding a caterpillar (which Meg looked up in her guide-book with Maria completely intrigued), a toad, and a woodpecker.

I helped my dad later in the afternoon following a sumptuous meal of spaghetti and meatballs, garlic bread and corn on the cob. We loaded up all of the slate from the barn to store next to the chicken house (the barn needs to be refurbished due to its age and the fact that it could topple over any second). Nothing better than some good, hard labor (when you are not forced to do it, heh?!). My body was rather shaky and exhausted after moving the slate and picking up a few giant rocks, but it was a good exhausted – one where you feel you’ve actually done something useful with this machine that is our body. I enjoyed time with my pops, too. When we rode on the forklift to get the rocks, there was a moment he looked back at me to make sure I was on securely. I felt like a kid again hanging out my dad. I wanted to tell him how much it meant to me to share that moment with him but it seemed a rather strange comment to make when we were both dripping in sweat and riding a forklift down a gravel hill. So I kept it to myself but I believe he knew just from the sheer fact of being my dad, and having an intuition for those things.

We returned to cake and ice cream – yummy. Meg and I laughed at our sweet Maria as she sat in her chair eating the icing off her cake. All was quiet and she chimed in “Ahh, I am enjoying this cake.” A perfect summation of what we were all thinking. We finished the night with Matilda – an absolutely adorable movie with Danny Devito and Rhea Perlman. It was super moon night, and it shined into the house so brightly that I felt like I was being interrogated at times. But it was gorgeous in the clear black night out in the country.

We woke on Sunday and rode horses. The girls all did a fab job with Meg and dad helping them. The horses were in great moods and caused no distress. After the girls rode, we had some killer pancakes made by dad. He uses a regular whole wheat mix but adds a bit of brown sugar to it and it makes them to die for. They have this crispness around the edges and a melt in your mouth taste. Sometimes he makes them with nuts and blueberries, which sounds amazing. After pancakes, the girls took a tractor ride around the pasture and gathered a few more eggs from the chicken brood. The bickering began around that time with little slights setting them off (Maria yelled at Alana for talking about dogs because it made Maria miss Cy; Alana yelled back; Maria yelled at Janira for “bragging” and Janira cried that she was not trying to brag but Maria always thought she was and it’s not fair…). Hence, it was a good time to leave so Meg and dad would not be subjected to it and I could ignore it from the long way off in the front of the truck.

We pulled out of the drive, and I felt so happy. You know those moments you get every once in a while where the entire world looks peachy-keen and life has circled around to right where you want it? I had it. Right in the palm of my hand. And then Maria threw a marker past Alana so she couldn’t use it and Alana screamed at Maria and Janira cried her head hurt, and I was back in reality. I had promised that we would stop at McDonald’s Playland on the way back home. Why did I do that? This McDonald’s Playland was the grossest one I have ever seen. The tables were dirty; the kids were loud and obnoxious, and the parents were even worse. One parent was yelling at her son to get down from the slide. When he refused she yelled “That’s it, Tiger, I am going to whoop on your ass with my belt in front of everyone.” I was ready to rescue the kid if she did it in front of me but she refrained. Eye-opening to see other walks of life. I pride myself on appreciating diversity but the folks in that McDonald’s tested me.

When we finally got home, we got to start the party all over again with Jon’s family. Patty had kept Giovanni and Mario all weekend up at her condo, and I am sure was ready to bring them down to our house to say good riddance! It took her over ten hours to make potato salad because she had to keep running after them. What a woman. I was being a little pissy from being tired when the rest of the clan arrived. The kids went down in the basement to dance to “I’m Sexy and I Know it” and Jon grilled hamburgers and brats and peppers. The meal was delicious, and I shook off my irritable mood and had a good time (it was probably the realization that I would get another whole sheet cake to eat (I had already had two others for Maria’s b-day earlier in the week)).

Everyone left around 8:30. Jon and I dropped on the couch. The kids fell pretty quickly, too. Maria’s b-day weekend brought lots of good times but I was glad to be on my couch with my hubby staring off into space. Although, loading up slate would be a close second.

"MOM!"

Adventures in the Life of a Working Mama

Tag: Nature

Sunday Woods Day

Pinch me

Nature!

The joys of nature, good food and family