Keys to my Past

What was your favorite Christmas gift this year? (Okay, technically LAST year)  One of my favorites was this old snuff jar:

"What?!  A snuff jar?!" you say?  Yeah...well, my favorite part was what it was filled with...dozens of really awesome old keys.  The jar belonged to my great Grandma Brandt, and it was where she kept her keys.

Years ago I snapped this photo at the Minnesota State Fair of a wall that was covered with old keys:

I just love the texture and patterns in all of the keys, and wondering where they all came from.  I love the various colors they've taken on and bled onto the wood as they endure harsh Minnesota winters.  I printed the close-up photo and had it hanging in my cubicle for years.

Now that I freelance from home, and don't have to worry about my valuables being swiped from my desk (like my wedding ring was...but that's a whole other sad story), I thought I'd make my own real wall of keys.  That was a year or two ago, and I've been searching for cool old keys at garage sales ever since.  So far I have found a whopping two keys, for $1 each.  At this rate it would take me FOR-E-VER.

Well, when my mom caught word that I was keeping my eye out for keys, she remembered that they had a whole jar of them stored away somewhere from my Dad's Grandma, and they gave them to me alongside other fun Christmas gifts!

...And here they are (most of them) on display in my studio, along with my shiny letter "G" and my collection of fortune cookie fortunes that are tucked under the plastic corner guard. 

Keys are important.  You'll know that all too well if you've experienced the panic that sets in when you realize you've locked yourself out of your car or your house.  They protect the things that are of value to you.  They are a symbol of adulthood.  I so clearly remember being in high school when it was glaringly obvious who just got their driver's license because of the huge, clanking ring of keys they had swinging from their pocket for the world to see. They are symbols of independence.  Your first car.  Your first apartment.  Yours and only yours because you have the key.  They are a symbol of trust in whomever you may share them with.

I see bins and bins of old keys at the Junk Bonanza with my mom each year, yet I've never purchased any there.  Sure, I could have bought this whole wall from one antique seller, just for the look.  But now I have my own collection that has a lot more meaning behind it.  (Thanks Mom & Dad!)

There are big keys and teeny tiny little keys.  Black keys and silver keys and brass keys.  Every one has a different design and unlocks some unknown object or door from my  past. I look at the keys that are slightly twisted and distorted and wonder what that one got stuck in.  I left the little strings tied on some of the keys because that's the way Great Grandma had them.  I wonder what doors they unlocked, what clocks they wound up, what secrets they kept, and what treasures they may have secured...yet I find it delightfully ironic that in the end, the objects they unlocked are probably long gone, and the keys themselves are the treasures!



On a related note, here's a fun idea I came across on Pinterest via "Young House Love"...

A little shadow box displaying the keys to the places you've lived.  Makes me wish I had kept copies of my old keys!  After all, modern keys may look totally boring to me now, but who knows...my great grand kids may unlock everything with fingerprint recognition and may find my keys to be fascinating relics!

The Crumbs on the Floor can WAIT!

Who doesn't want to lose a few pounds and/or get healthier, right? 

My fabulous friend Jess found this great plan for an "8 week weight loss challenge" online, and gathered together a group willing to take on this challenge, myself included.  In a nutshell, everyone who's in on it pitches in some agreed upon amount of money.  Each week you earn points for doing various healthy behaviors (ie. drinking 64 oz of water per day, exercising 30 minutes a day, keeping a food journal, eating 3 servings of veggies, etc...).  At the end of the 8 weeks there are 2 winners, one for the highest points earned, and one for the highest percentage weight loss.  Those two winners split the pot.

I gravitated toward the idea because I knew that the accountability alone would help me, along with having a clear plan printed out to look at each day and blanks to fill in with points.   So far so good...while I haven't earned every point possible every day yet, I feel like I'm making some great strides in taking on some good, healthy behaviors on a regular basis!

Looking at a daily list of guidelines has brought me back to when I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes (GD) in my last 10 weeks of pregnancy with my 2nd baby.  For those 10 weeks I stuck to my GD diet to a tee.  I counted every carb in ever meal and snack, wrote down every single thing I ate, had my scheduled amount of carbs every 2-3 hours, and checked my blood sugar and ketones religiously. To give you a little background, needles have been known to make me pass out.  Yet I somehow pricked myself with a needle twice a day without hesitation.

So why is it such a challenge to follow this much much simpler 8 week plan?  

Why do I struggle to push my workouts from my usual 10 minutes a day to 30?  I don't have to count carbs or calories, and I don't have to make myself bleed every day.  The difference is that with GD, I was doing it all for my baby boy.  And if you're a mom, you totally get it...you'd do ANYTHING for your baby.  I would eat nothing but pigs' feet and anchovies and stab my fingers with a needle 10 times a day for 10 weeks if that's what it took to ensure my baby was healthy.

I have discovered so far, in week 1 of this challenge, that my greatest challenge is convincing myself that I am worth the time.  I am worth taking a half hour out of my precious few hours of the boys' nap times to work out.  I can tell myself I'm doing this to look better for my husband, or to have more energy for my kids, but in the end I really need to find myself worth the time in order to make the time.  There are SO many things that I need to pack into that short nap time every day being a small business(es) owner, not to mention keeping up the house and taking care of daily family upkeep, that it's very hard for me to put myself even ON my list, let alone at the top of it!

So far in this 8 week challenge I have made myself immediately do my workout as soon as the boys go down for naps, because I know if I start doing something else I'll get too into it and will lose track of time, and before I know it, they'll be awake and ready for supper.

The other day I was doing my workout in my living room (I love my kick boxing DVD's!).  During my warm-up I was doing some push-ups and here was my view...

GROSS! The floor is seriously covered with crumbs from the boys' snacks.  (Yeah, snack traps don't trap everything.)  Every time I lowered my face to the floor I was met with a close-up view of crunched up whole wheat Chex.  With every push-up I had to remind myself that my health is more important than having a freshly vacuumed floor all the time.  While the lady on the workout DVD was saying "one, two, three, four" I was saying, "it can wait, it can wait, it can wait, it can wait."

And guess what...it did wait.  It was all still there when I was done, and I was still able to vacuum it up.  And the boys didn't get seriously injured or die from the crumbs.  And my house doesn't look like it will be featured on "Hoarders." Go figure?  Life still goes on even if I take a little time for myself. And I lost 3 pounds in week 1! Win-win!

Dear Random Blonde Mall Woman,

This post is for all of you moms who have had some stranger lecture you on how to parent your children in public.  And you, random blonde woman in the mall. Especially you.

So tonight I was a the mall in the Apple store waiting for someone to help me get a new iPhone.  Fifteen minutes into waiting for help the boys were getting antsy and wrestless and naughty.  This happens every time we go to the Apple store.  They hate to sit and wait in the stroller and I don't blame them. They were in a double stroller, Sam behind Toby.  So, naturally, Sammy starts to kick Toby in the head, and poke his ears with chopsticks from our previously enjoyed dinner at Big Bowl.  (Typical entertainment idea that pops into the head of a toddler.) Figuring that it probably would NOT benefit Toby in the long run to have chopsticks shoved into his brain, I immediately grabbed Sammy's hands, yanked the chopsticks out of his grip, and yelled, "Stop it, Sam!!"  I think my husband grabbed his chin and turned his face toward his and also yelled "stop it!"  Seems like a normal reaction to protect your youngest child from being turned into a vegetable, right? 

My hubby decides to go take the boys to the soft play area while I continue to wait.  They had a BLAST and I'm wishing my phone hadn't taken 45 minutes because I wanted to play with them too!  But, as I'm wandering around looking at stuff, this random blonde woman comes up to me and says, "excuse me, it's probably none of my business but...." oh, here we go.  I should have stopped her right there and said, "you're right, it's not!"  But, being the civil person I am, I smiled, nodded, and listened.  She went on to tell me that "when you were dealing with your kids just then, EVERYONE was watching!" (in my head: "um, so what?! I care about my kids' safety more than the opinions of random strangers!")  She goes on, "I just wanted you to know that it really bothered me to see that..." (uh, once again, so what?! Who the heck are you again? Oh that's right, some completely random stranger in a mall who knows NOTHING about me or my kids!) ... "and you know children are a GIFT!" I resist the urge to punch her in the face, figuring that it wouldn't help my case that I happen to be an insanely loving and quite capable mom.


Well, I was in such shock and disbelief all I could say was, "uh, okay," and "I didn't hurt anybody."  And to her last comment about children being a gift, as she walked away from me I added, "Believe me, I KNOW THAT." She of course had no interest in what I had to say as she walked away while I was talking. But after the fact of course I have all these things running through my head that I wish I had told her.

So, random blonde woman in the mall, if you ever come across this blog post, here is what I'd like to say to you:

#1 - Yes, you are absolutely right, it IS none of your business how I parent MY CHILDREN.

#2 - I have never hurt either of my kids, nor do I ever plan to. ever. If I were abusing my kids in public, then yes, you may be the hero of the day.  Didn't apply here.

#3 - You are telling ME that children are a gift?! You have no CLUE what we went through to get our two most precious gifts in the world and have a heck of a lot of nerve to even suggest I don't know that with every fiber of my being.  Yes, they are precious...too precious to ruin by lack of discipline or by a foot to the skull.

#4 - You say you and "everyone" in the store were "watching." I'm sorry to hear how concerned you are with what strangers think.  Must be a lot of pressure for you.  But did you happen to notice that one child was about to scramble the other's brain with a pair of chopsticks?!  Because I think if these gifts are so precious I wouldn't want one of them mutilated by the other.  And I'm guessing you didn't turn your head until we were yelling "stop it" and had no clue what we were trying to stop.

#5 - And heck, as long as you're here, why not take a stroll through my blog history.  You may notice how much I dedicate my life to my boys.  How I spend every waking and sleeping moment with them as a full time mom.  How I put their best interests above my own on a daily...no, minute-ly basis. See how happy, well adjusted, loved and blessed they are.

I am actually embarrassed to say that I let her get to me at all.  That on my way home I was so infuriated and that tears were welling up in me at the thought that anyone on the planet, even a complete stranger, was doubting that I did not love and cherish my precious boys more than life itself.

To you, random blonde woman, and all random people who think they know how others should handle their children and feel the need to tell them, I tell you this.  Unless you see someone actually ABUSING a child, not preventing physical harm like I was, Keep your opinions to yourself, because that's all they are...opinions, first reactions with absolutely no background information or context. If the first words out of your mouth are "it's probably none of my business," that's your flag to shut your mouth.  I understand you probably had good intentions, that you do have kids yourself, and that you were looking out for my kids, and I appreciate that.  But take a second to think before you judge someone you don't know based on nothing more than the information you gathered from the one thing I did that was loud enough to catch your attention in a crowded mall. Somehow I am thinking the giggles, cuddles, kisses and hugs I gave my kids that very same night in the very same mall didn't catch your attention.

And to all of my wonderful friends and family on Facebook, thank you for helping me cool my blood from a boil to a simmer.  I'm hoping it'll be lukewarm by morning.  ;-)  And from here on out I'm gonna try very hard to tune out clueless strangers and only tune into those who actually know me and my kids and care about us.  And our brains not being scrambled by chopsticks.

DID I MENTION THE CHOPSTICK BRAIN SCRAMBLE THING YET?!  Sheesh.

Monarch Butterfly Re-Wind: From Egg to Worm!

I love it when I can do something super fun and educational at the same time with my kids, and watching monarch caterpillars turn into butterflies has been one of those things.  Just a couple days ago we got to release another butterfly that we watched transform and hatch in a jar!

If you enjoyed my recent "Our Very Hungry Caterpillar" post, this one will re-wind back to an even earlier stage in the butterfly's life...a single egg!  I was out the other day picking milkweed leaves to feed our 2nd "very hungry caterpillar," and looking on the undersides of the leaves it only took me seconds before I spotted an actual monarch EGG.  They are incredibly tiny, perfectly round little specks on the underside of the leaves, and are only about the size of a period at the end of a sentence.  Here you can see it next to my zoomed-in fingertip:

I put it in a little bug cage and a couple days later, sure enough, "out popped a very tiny and very hungry caterpillar."

I can't get over how tiny these things are.  This one above is maybe 1/16th of an inch long at the most.  He's so tiny, I have to stare for a while, inspecting every inch of his little cage to find him.  Yesterday I had to stretch a piece of pantyhose over the top of the lid so he couldn't crawl out of the air holes!

So, we've currently just let loose our 2nd monarch, are watching our 3rd caterpillar eat and grow that my parents gave us last weekend, and now have this teeny speck who will be our 4th!  So amazing to watch, and what a cool nature lesson for the kids!!

So, if you want to find some yourself, just look for milkweed.  Here's a photo I took of some of ours last month:

 Right now the plants are starting to grow their pods.  I used to love opening up the milkweed pods as a kid, letting loose the silky seeds in the wind!  But, you can be pretty sure if it's milkweed if you break off a leaf or stem and this white "milk" oozes out:

 

So next time you're outside and come across some milkweed, take a peek under those leaves!  If you come across any tiny white eggs, it's a great way to teach your kids about the miracles of nature, and just how tiny and fragile we all start out!

Our Very Hungry Caterpillar!

Here's a very cool way for you kids to get up close and personal with nature and learn about how caterpillars transform into butterflies!

A couple weeks ago my mom brought over a monarch caterpillar in a jar for Sammy.  Each year she and my dad find them on their property and will put one or two in a jar to watch it transform into a butterfly. Sammy's caterpillar built it's chrysalis before he made it to our house, so my mom emailed photos of his progress...

 Here he is eating a leaf and, of course, pooping it out!  These caterpillars like milkweed plants.  We have a bunch in our back yard but unfortunately couldn't find any of these guys this year.  Maybe next year!  But that's where you want to hunt for them.

 My mom puts a stick in the jar which is usually where they build their chrysalis, however, this guy decided to use the jar lid instead.  Here he is starting to attach himself.

These little things just always amaze me. They're so pretty and green and I love the little gold "details!" It's almost like a little gold zipper across the top.  This is how it looked when she brought it over, and we've been waiting for our butterfly to emerge, which happened today!

Last night it started to turn black...actually, the chrysalis doesn't really turn black, it gets clear, enabling you to see the black of the wings inside.

 Here's what it looked like this morning.  You can definitely see it is a monarch now! 

We left to take Toby to his 18 month checkup, and when we returned we found this...

So, for a half hour we all forgot how starving we were for lunch, and went out on the deck, where we opened the jar and enjoyed the tame-ness that comes with a newly hatched monarch!

 "Wow, this is cool! Almost makes me forget about you holding me down while the doctor tortured me with that enormous needle, Mom!" 

 Climbing on Sammy's hand

Okay, so I went a little nuts with the camera.  But hey, how often do you have the opportunity to take close-up photos of a live butterfly?

 (Of course it was only a matter of time before we had to introduce our butterfly to Puppy!)

 By this point it's wings were starting to dry enough to flutter around the deck.  This part of our deck is fully screened so it was like a little butterfly house for about an hour!

We ate lunch, played with him a little more, and then said our goodbyes when he was ready to fly away!

I'll try to remember to post a link back to this post next summer and give you a heads up that it's time to go caterpillar hunting!

Powerless in Minnesota

Yesterday, during a record-breaking wind storm in our area, we lost our power at 2:00 am.  With over a hundred flights to Minneapolis canceled, my husband was stranded in Detroit, so I was "home alone." Let's just say I slept extremely "light" that night, subconsciously straining to hear Toby's 4:30 cry for food from upstairs through howling winds and debris hitting the windows, since the monitors were not working! Sammy was a little freaked out when he learned that the lights wouldn't turn on, so I promised him we'd go to Target and get a cool new flashlight.

We spent the morning in between waking up and picking up Daddy at the airport going to various places with heat and electricity...first to Target to get some flash lights, baby food and breakfast since I didn't want to open our frig, then a race to the pediatrician for Toby's 9 month appointment.  I wasn't prepared for Sammy to also have two shots that he needed (by "unprepared" of course I mean having left the all important "Puppy" in the car).  It was a challenge to say the least, comforting two little boys who had each gotten two shots, with no comfort items!  Eeek!  Thankfully my ipod loaded with Thomas cartoons and a couple stickers from the doctor calmed Sammy down, who was more upset about the shots than Toby.  Then we were off to the Mall of America where we stopped in the Apple store for a surprise visit with Sammy's cool Apple Specialist Gramma!  I borrowed some electricity in an outlet in the hallway to re-charge my iPhone a little while feeding Toby some breakfast in the stroller.  Then, off to the airport to pick up Daddy who had finally been able to make it home on his 4th flight attempt...all of this done by 10:30 am!  It was a full morning to say the least!

My husband drove us home and headed to work.  We decided to stick around home since it was still 65 degrees inside (cold, windy, and snowflakes falling outside), so the boys could nap in their own beds.  We had some "analog fun" without electricity between then and nap time...

It was a struggle between having fun with flashlights and conserving the batteries in case we needed them when it actually got dark.  But, they were NEW and AWESOME and we just HAD to play with them!

Here we are clearly trying to see how many battery powered devices we can use at one time:

Sammy wanted to cut some paper so we spread out on the floor and made paper Thomas engines.  Here he is helping glue the wheels on Gordon:

More flashlight fun.  I had just read some magazine article about how you can help teach hand-eye coordination by having your kid point the flashlight at things.  So, I named things around the house up high or across the room for him to shine his light on:

Somehow every game comes back to belly buttons...we shone it on each others' of course...

I was afraid that after this morning's painful shots Sammy wouldn't enjoy his doctor kit so much.  However, it wasn't long before I heard "doctor me, Momma!"  He even "doctor'ed" his new paper engines:

 I did notice that when he gave me shots he pushed as hard as he could this time....he must have made the connection that shots are supposed to hurt!

We all sat on the floor in the basement and made a nice big mess playing with toys...

We rolled the ball back and fourth...

 ...and got good and worn out by nap time!  I got them all tucked in and less than 5 minutes later, the power came back on!  It was quite a relief as we lose our power during just about every major storm, one time for 4 days.  So, 11 hours without power was a short stint for us.

So, that is how we spend our power-less stretch!  While I had a TON to do this week, it was a bit of a blessing in disguise to be forced to stay away from my computer for a while and just focus on keeping the kids' minds off the fact that we had no power! Hooray for forced, electricity-free family fun!