Monthly Archives: April 2010

Family matters

Putting the ball in her court

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Works-for-Me WednesdayPoppy felt much better after her brief battle with pneumonia last week, but she still had to finish out the full 10 days of her antibiotics. She’s a rather stubborn child, and it took a lot of cajoling and crying to get her to take the medicine — until I let her take a little responsibility for it. One morning I got exasperated with her and said, “Fine. I’m going to set the timer for 5 minutes. If you haven’t taken the medicine by then I’m going to have to hold you down and pour it in.” Maybe not the most diplomatic or tender-hearted parenting, but it worked! She took the medicine, and she’s taken it the same way since (sans threats from her mother) with a minimum of complaining. Today, in fact, she took it with no complaining at all.

Tomorrow is the last day of the antibiotics, but I’m planning to continue to give her ownership of her issues. Now I just need to figure out how to make this work for the anti-fruits/veggies problem!

Family matters

Date Night Nine really was one big holiday

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9/52
Project 52: Date Nights logo

  • A set of SuperGrandparents.
  • A bit of entirely unscheduled free time.
  • Good friends.
  • Concert tickets.

    • My in-laws had signed on a few months ago to watch the kids for us this past weekend so we could go to a My Morning Jacket show. Then my sister-in-law had an unexpected need for help, for the very same weekend. Her husband was going to be in Haiti on a mission trip, and she had to take one of her four children out of town for an academic awards thing. Rather than dragging everyone along, she’d asked my in-laws to come stay with half of her brood. I was thinking that academics + social service took precedent over my desire to go to a concert, so I volunteered to stay home. But the in-laws just donned their superhero capes and said, “Nope! We’ll just pick the kids up on our way through and take them along.”

    All of this is to say: Rockford and I found ourselves with an unexpected and glorious swath of free time on Thursday evening. We went out for pizza, wandered around the bookstore almost until it closed, took an aimless walk and then went to a movie (“Shutter Island“). It was a spectacular date. But the free time? It wasn’t over! On Friday morning we went to the library and then to Lowe’s, where we bought a new weed whacker. (I know! So much romance!) Then we drove and drove and drove to Mike and Brook’s house, had a great barbecue dinner and then went to the concert.

    After a nice breakfast Saturday morning, we drove and drove and drove some more to my sister-in-law’s house, where we re-entered the world of diapers and fruit snacks and arguing about taking antibiotics. I did miss the kids — really! — but our extended Thursday-Friday date was some of the most relaxing time Rockford and I have spent together in, well, years maybe.

    Reading

    A lovely poem for a quiet evening

    American Life in Poetry: Column 266
    by Ted Kooser, US Poet Laureate
    The great American poet William Carlos Williams taught us that if a poem can capture a moment in life, and bathe it in the light of the poet’s close attention, and make it feel fresh and new, that’s enough, that’s adequate, that’s good. Here is a poem like that by Rachel Contreni Flynn, who lives in Illinois.

    The Yellow Bowl

    If light pours like water
    into the kitchen where I sway
    with my tired children,

    if the rug beneath us
    is woven with tough flowers,
    and the yellow bowl on the table

    rests with the sweet heft
    of fruit, the sun-warmed plums,
    if my body curves over the babies,

    and if I am singing,
    then loneliness has lost its shape,
    and this quiet is only quiet.

    Poem ©2009 by Rachel Contreni Flynn, whose newest book, “Tongue,” is forthcoming from Red Hen Press. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.