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JDaniel4s Mom

growing & learning with him

Waking Up to Find New and Old Dreams

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“If you want to make your dreams come true, the first thing you have to do is wake up.” ~J.M. Power

The quote placed at the top of this post talks about waking up to live your dreams. As the mom of an almost three year old, I find that some days are not filled with fulfilling my dreams or even building towards them.

Some days are about making my son’s dreams come true or helping him learn skills that will help him achieve his dreams later on. It may be getting to go to the local children’s museum. (JDaniel dreams of going there a lot.) It could be teaching him how to share or get along with other people. He will need to master sharing to be a successful child and  later man.

Some days are about redefining my dreams. I spent twenty years as a teacher in a public school system. It was all I planned on being. That dream changed when I got married and had JDaniel. I was still a teacher, but one of different kind. The shift from classroom to home meant learning a new skill set and dreaming different dreams.

Some days present new paths and directions that cause your dreams to shift. Things happen in our world’s that show us we have woken up to a new world or circumstances. There are family struggles, job changes, or economic shifts.

So when I stumble out of bed following the announcement through the baby monitor that it is morning time. I am not always sure if the goals and dreams I have for the day are going to happen or if something else will happen that I have yet to even dream off.

What goals and dreams do you have for the New Year?

This post is a part of Mama Kat’s Writing Workshop.

 
 
 

If Mrs. Matlock Offers You Lemons, Take Them and Make a Pie

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Every week for about nine months I have written a post for Mrs. Matlock’s Alphabe Thursday. There are about seventy bloggers a week that join Jenny Matlock in sharing ideas, thoughts, reflection and more that begin with a particular letter of the alphabet.

Reading each of the posts along with the comments Mrs. Matlock leaves for all of her students or meme followers is a highlight of my week. (Yes, she visits every person every week and leaves amazing comments. She sends e-mails to her students if she has a chance too.)

During L week Mrs. Matlock’s post was called L is for Lemon. In her post, she mentioned she was going to give away boxes of lemons and peppermints. It sounded like she had a multitude of lemons growing in her yard. We love fresh fruit and peppermints at your house so; I left a comment stating that we would love to win a box.

Much to my surprise, we were picked by Mrs. Matlock to receive one of her special boxes. The box arrived two days before Christmas. We loved the luscious lemon scent of the box. I wonder if the mail carrier kept it in the front of her truck just to smell the lemon scent as she made her deliveries.

We had guests over for dinner that night and I cut lemon slices for us to have in our sodas and iced teas. They were as impressed as we were that this wonderful box filled with candies and lemons with leaves still attached had been sent across the country to us.

I loved having the Larsons for dinner, but I could hardly wait to begin looking through my cookbooks for a recipe for a lemon pie to make for the holidays. The first book I pulled out was The Taste of Home Cookbook my husband had given me several years ago. It was within its pages that I found a two page spread dedicated to lemon pies.

I settled on one that was label light and easy. With all the sweets we have during and before the holidays light was definitely needed. I am all for easy recipes that are guaranteed to come together.

The pie turned out so well. JDaniel and I were able to work together to squeeze the lemons and mix the ingredients. He did have to be distracted to keep him from drinking the lemon juice right from the measuring cup right after squeezing it. Mrs. Matlock’s peppermints were the perfect answer.

I could tell by the way JDaniel enthusiastically licked the bowl clean that it was going to taste good. Actually I knew it was going to taste good too. My fingers were dipping into the remnants left in the bowl as fast as his were.
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So, if Mrs. Matlock offers you lemons I hope you will accept some and use them to make this lemon pie.

Here is the recipe:

Lemon Cream Pie
1 envelope of unflavored gelatin
1/4 cup of cold water
1/3 cup of lemon juice
1/3 cup of Splenda
2  6 ounce cartons of whipped fat-free yogurt
1 tsp. of lemon peel
1 carton of frozen reduced-fat whipped topping
1 graham cracker crust ( 8 inches)
Directions:
  1. Sprinkle gelatin over cold water and let it sit for 1 minute.
  2. Microwave this mixture for twenty seconds uncovered.
  3. Stir in Splenda and lemon juice.
  4. Add yogurt and lemon peel.
  5. Mix well and then fold in whipped topping.
  6. Spoon into crust.
  7. Refrigerate for 8 hours.
  8. Sit in front of a computer with a slice of pie and read the other wonderful posts from Mrs. Matlock’s Alphabe Thursday.

 
 
 

Grocery Store Made Santa Decision for JDaniel

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We had talked (JDaniel and me) about how Santa was based on a wonderful man that live long ago named St. Nick. I had mentioned that presents come on Christmas Day in remembrance of this wonderful man. We had also read books that had Santa in them. I tried not to make a big deal about him.

All seemed to be going well until we need to stop at our local BI-Lo for milk one evening. Seriously all we went in the store for was milk. We got a whole lot more than milk on this visit.

Right inside the doorway of the BI-Lo is a photo studio. (Not all BI-Los have them. The one closest to us does.) Right outside of the photo studio in front of the frozen foods was set up an area where you could have a picture taken with Santa. Sitting right on an emerald green wingback chair was Santa as happy and jolly as could be.

JDaniel had never seen Santa outside of a book. This man in a white beards and read suit stopped him cold in his tracks. Peeking at him from behind my legs JDaniel waved and smiled broadly. When Santa invited him to come and sit with him, JDaniel suddenly remembered we needed to get milk and guided me quickly away from Santa and through the frozen foods to the milk cooler.

After retrieving and paying for the milk, we headed out the door and JDaniel looked back at Santa’s chair and Santa was gone. “Where did he go?” JDaniel asked. I told him I thought Santa needed to go and eat dinner just like we did. JDaniel seemed think that made sense.

While eating dinner that night, I asked JDaniel to tell his dad who we saw at the grocery store. “I saw the real Santa,” he said, “Right there at BI-Lo.”

I guess we have seen Santa and for the next few years he is real.

How did you handle Santa at your house?

 
 

Learning to Love the Gift Because You Love The Giver

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You don’t always know until you open the box as to whether you are going to love the gift it contains or plan to pass it on to one of your friends at the next white elephant swap. Once you open that beautifully decorated box with the red velvet ribbon and the gift it contains is revealed the suspense is over.

What is left is how you respond to the gift?

There are several avenues you take when the gift you have been given is far and away not something you will love and cherish forever.

If you are at the gift giver’s home, you can smile and secretly plot where you are going to hide the gift in their home. There is a chance they will forget they gave you the gift and when they find it they will slap themselves in the head and say, “Oh! That is where that gift was.” (I have a sister that tried this several times. It never worked. Mom always found the gift later on and remembered she had given it to her.)

You could be rude about it and ask if there is anyone else present that would like to trade with you or have this gift as a future birthday present. (This is best done behind a closed door after the gift exchange unless you want to crush the joy the giver has in giving the gift.)

You can honestly thank the giver for the wonderful electric toothbrush or sweater with glittering poinsettias and remember that if you drop it off at Goodwill by the end of the year it is a tax deduction.

There is the option of thanking the giver and only displaying the crystallized Lucite soap dish and hand towel with golden embroidered fleur de lis in your bathroom when your boyfriend comes to visit.

Each of these options has its flaws and there is a chance they could figure out what their gift wasn’t well received. If you give it away, the giver might ask to see it at a later time. If you keep it and only put in out with they are at your house, you could forget where it is. Then what do you say? It was hidden by JDaniel and he doesn’t remember where he hid it. That will only work once if you are lucky.

There is really only one sure way to receive a gift and have the giver know it is well received even if you dislike it a lot. You have to remember the heart of the giver. They may truly love what they are giving you. It is very possible they fell in love with this gift and if they loved they knew you would too. Remembering that they selected this gift out of love can really help you truly be thankful for a ceramic knife from your dad or the sleep positioning headrest from your mother.

Many teachers and mothers around the world have learned this lesson after years of practice. I hope you don’t have to do this much this year, but if you do please remember the heart of the giver. Your heartfelt thanks will be well received.

 

 

Christmas Ornament Memories

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Over time you start to collect Christmas ornaments. Some may be from places you visited you want to remember. Some maybe gifts from friends or family. Some may represent a hobby or interest you have. Whatever the reason you have to obtain your ornaments within a short time span you may have enough to cover a Christmas tree.
For many years I didn’t put up a tree in the condo I was living in. I lived alone and spent most Christmases at my mother’s house. This didn’t stop me from being given Christmas ornaments from my students. I had a thriving collection of tin school houses with my name engraved on the bottom. There were also a few hand-painted or crafted by students. Those I cherished and still have. The tin school houses seem to have disappeared over time.
One year about fifteen years ago everything changed. I decided to not only get a tree but start collecting ornaments for the tree. I started working as an educational trainer that year and spent many weekends flying around the United States teaching other teachers how to use an online educational site then called Marco Polo. (I taught over thirty training sessions over the year and a half I worked for them) I decided to try to find an ornament to represent each training that I conducted during that time.
Some of the ornaments represent the actual place I visited and some represent what I learned from that training.
There is a dove that represents a training I did in Hazelton, PA. The teachers there were awesome and encouraging. I had done a training session in South Carolina that was horrible for many reasons. The materials didn’t arrive until lunchtime, they liked the site manager better than me, and the list goes on and on. Before I walked in the school to do the Hazelton training, I prayed for guidance on how to meet the needs of the teachers that would attend the training along with peace on my part that everything would work out.
I have a lovely wooden tree that I picked up when I went to Chuckey, Tennessee. I had a free afternoon and traveled down to Gatlinburg to visit a craft school I had attended one summer when I was in high school. I love the simple lines of the tree. The training went well there if you discount the fact that the internet set up at the school as designed for no more than ten users at a time and I had twenty in my training. Thankfully I was given CD each teacher could work off of. It was a lovely group that ended up with a simple lesson.
A small biplane represents the size of the plane I had to fly in and out of Paducah, Kentucky on. When I got ready to fly out of Paducah we were all asked to move to the back of the plane to take off. There huddled in the back of the plane were three other passengers and I along with the stewardess.
The final ornament I am going to share with you is Santa on a tractor. It represents a training I did in Pleasant Plains, Illinois. While getting ready to leave the training, I saw a school bus full of teens drive by. It was the middle of the summer and I didn’t think they were summer school students. It was explained to me by a teacher at the school that they were coming back from the fields after a day of detasseling. Detasseling is the process of taking the pollen-producing tassel out of the corn stalk. It sounded like hot and tiring work. The teacher was shocked I had never heard of it.
JDaniel and I rifled through my box of ornaments to choose the ones that would decorate our Christmas tree this year. Our tree is tiny and didn’t need many ornaments so we only selected a few. The ones I described to you above are the ones we selected to put on the tree along with a couple of colored balls and a few other ornaments.
JDaniel loves each of the ornaments for different reasons than the ones I selected them for. He loved the plane and the tractor because he loves vehicles of all shapes and sizes. The dove he said looked pretty. The tree was due to its texture.
No matter what the reasons were for his selections when I look at them on the tree, I remember trainings that I went on all those years ago that inspired them along with the wonderful and challenging people I met on my journeys.

 

If a Squirrel Needs an Acorn, Try Looking My Clothes Washer!

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My little Indiana Jones loves to pick up acorns and other small objects while scavenging around the backyard and place them in the pockets of his pants. He has only just discovered that his pants have pockets so, he feels the need to keep them filled.

Thankfully some of his treasures fall out of his pocket during the day. I find them under his chair at the dinner table, beside his car seat, in his bed, and almost anywhere else he spends time during the day.

Some of the remaining acorns and bits nature end up at the bottom of his hamper. He needs to have his clothes washed every few days due mostly to spillage that takes place at mealtimes. I guess I need to be thankful for the yogurt smudges and cottage cheese splotches. If they weren’t there, some of the bits of nature might start to decay if left too long at the bottom of the hamper. Due to his talent for creating modern art displays on his clothes, they don’t get much time to do so.

A few are found when I check his pockets before placing his pants in the washer. I have to confess that I am not the most thorough of pocket checkers. I am often distracted when I am putting things into the washer. There are many things that can cause me to be distracted. JDaniel is always up to something. I am usually trying to figure out what we will be having for dinner at the last minute. I could go on and on with things that cause small acorns tucked at the base of JDaniel’s pockets to go unnoticed.

So, if you happen to know any hungry squirrels that are looking for really clean acorns, please let me know. I have a small number of them that seem to come out of the washer each week.

Does this happen to you?

 
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Harvesting Words- Mom, Tell Me about It

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There are times when even I the official JDaniel translator does not understand what he is trying to tell me. Sometimes due to the context of the conversation and sometimes due to where we are when we have the conversation I can figure out what he has just said. When I do not recognize the word he is trying to say, I ask him to tell me about it. Sometimes I ask him the following questions: What does it look like? What is near what you want or see? What color is it? Have we seen it before? Narrowing down the object of discussion usually helps him discern the word he is trying to say.

Lately, JDaniel has been pointing out objects we see when we are out in the car as a fire truck. After getting me to tell him that it is a fire truck, he says, “Tell me about it.” The first time he did this I wanted to break out laughing. I caught myself before the chuckle could escape from my lips. I am so glad I did. JDaniel was being serious. He was giving me an opportunity to share with him what I knew fire trucks. I do not know a lot. Most of what I know about them has come from watching videos on fire trucks with him and he already knows those facts.

I look forward to him asking for me to tell him about things again. This is a great opportunity to talk about shapes, colors, sounds along with introducing new vocabulary words to him.

What are you doing Mom?

This question comes up a lot of car rides or when I am doing the most mundane things. The answer to the question when I am driving the car is to say, “JDaniel, I am driving the car.” I have thought about it and am not sure that is what is asking. He seems content with my answer but, I do wonder if he is looking for more details just as he is when he says,” Tell me about it.” I have started putting what I am doing in sequence with details. “Well, I am driving the car on the highway, because it is the fastest way to the library. When we get there, we can look for books” I say to him.

Does he need all these details?
Yes, he must or he won’t be asking for them.

Do I think taking the time to give him the details helps his brain development?
Yes, I think it is helping him build brain connections that he will use as a foundation to build knowledge on later.

Does he just like to talk like his mom sometimes?
Yes, he most certainly does.

What questions are your children asking?

 
 

Decisions about Halloween and Pumpkins

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There are so many decisions families make about Halloween.

Here are a few we have talked about at my house:

Will we trick or treat?

Some families don’t trick or treat. They have legitimate reasons and have decided not to participate. My husband and I both trick or treated when we were little and decided that it would be all right for JDaniel to dress up and visit houses in our neighborhood.

Will you put out a pumpkin?

Yes. We both had pumpkins on our porches when we were little and don’t see this as a problem for us.

Will the pumpkin have a face carved into it?

Yes. We decided that we could have a happy face carved into a pumpkin. I am totally aware of the history of carved pumpkins. A parent wrote me a three-page letter on the horrors of Halloween when I first started teaching twenty years ago. He detailed as much of the ancient history and meaning of Halloween objects he felt I needed to know followed by a declaration that his child wasn’t to participate in any Halloween related activities in the classroom. I think he had a right to share his thoughts about Halloween with me. His feelings on the subject were respected and I let his daughter abstain from activities that would have been objectionable to him.

Will we decorate the outside of the house with skeletons and ghosts?

No. JDaniel recently noticed some Halloween decorations at a friend’s house and was scared of them. They weren’t going to be a part of our Halloween décor anyway. We certainly wouldn’t be doing them even if we had planned to do them with JDaniel’s fear of them.

Will we read Halloween related books?

Yes. I am reviewing one this week in Read. Explore.Learn. I am not pointing out witches or ghosts out and discussing them. If he asks about what they are, I will tell him what they are called. At two he probably won’t want an in-depth discussion anyway.

 

 
 

Please Don’t Call Me Pumpkin In Public!

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I have so many cute nicknames for JDaniel. Some stick around for a long time like “Cutie Patootie” and “Lion” as in Daniel in the lion’s den. Some are temporary and fit an activity we are doing like “Super Rake Boy” and “The King of Clean Up”. He seems to love them all. JDaniel loves terms of endearment. I think he sees them as a form of praise or acknowledgement of love.
Of course he is two and half and hasn’t really reached a point where I really embarrass him. It is almost as if we live in our own little world even while we are out and about. I can joke and tease him and he thinks it is fun. I can push him on the swings and he giggles joyfully when I call him a “Rocketing Toddler in Space”. He roars even louder when he jumps up from behind bushes and I call him “My Ferocious One”. JDaniel runs faster into my arms when I call for “Sweet JDaniel” to come.

I really don’t look forward to the “Ah! Mom, please don’t call me that in front of my friends or anyone.” The cries of “Do you do this to embarrass me?” or “Shh! don’t ever say that again!” will soon fill my ears. There will be a time when he will just stand there and shake his head.
I don’t look forward to that. I really love having these little nicknames I can use and he enjoys. Maybe he will still let me use them at home.
When did your children ask you to stop with nicknames?
Are you still allowed to use them in the house?

Are there nicknames that have stuck and are part of your children’s public persona?

 

Away to Asheville-Alphabe Thursday: The Letter A

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This weekend I am going to be spending my first night away from JDaniel since he was born to attend the Type A Conference in Asheville. I am really excited about getting away with my husband and meeting other bloggers. Yes, my husband is coming too. He won’t be attending the conference. He will be enjoying so downtime along with so couple time with me.
My sister Michelle and her two sons are coming from Atlanta to be JDaniel. He knows that they are coming. He is so excited about spending time with them. What they will do while they are here has been planned by him already. The children’s museum and McDonald’s are things his cousins will like according to him. He will love time with them no matter what they do. (My sister really wants to go to the zoo. He will love the zoo too.)
JDaniel doesn’t know that Mommy and Daddy are not going to be home for the visit. I have been avoiding telling him. By the time this post is up I will probably have mentioned it to him. When I talk about going away, I don’t think he understands what I am talking about. Mommy doesn’t go away. Daddy has had to visit with Nana several times this year overnight due to his father’s poor health and subsequent passing. Mommy hasn’t done it. Once I month when I go to a sorority meeting my husband puts JDaniel to bed. Bedtime rituals have been totally my job. I love doing the bedtime routine.
There are some of you that may go away for a weekend a few times a year to bond as a couple, attend a retreat, or deal with family things. I think that is wonderful. My sister Michelle has always done that. It is good to get some downtime. I just have never done it before.

I am sure JDaniel will have a great time with Aunt Michelle and his cousins. He may only make a scene when I leave for my benefit. He will be happy to see me come home so that he can tell me what he has done. I know will be true.

How I will fair is a different story. I have really looked forward to learning tons at the conference. My husband and I haven’t really had extended periods of time alone together unless JDaniel was asleep in two and half years. That will be wonderful.

It will be fine. Right?

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