Vacations

I don't know when this started exactly, but Nick and I have a tradition in which every year on his birthday we take a vacation to someplace we've never gone before.  We spend much of the year planning and discussing the pros and cons of various states, cities, and activities before deciding on the one we pick to visit.

This probably started out as us visiting my dad who, at the time Nick was little, lived in California. We'd usually fly out for a visit in the summer and I think these trips morphed into our current vacation model.  When Nick was little, it was easier and much less stressful to visit family since I was assured of help and additional hands when dealing with an active toddler.  As Nick's grown though, our vacations have become more independent in nature, not that family doesn't still play a role in them.

In addition to the traditional week-long trips, Nick and I have often taken last-minute long weekend trips to locations near to home that we've never gone to before.  A couple of years ago, since we've lived in Arkansas, we hopped in the car and drove 4 hours to Branson, MO.  Branson has become a hotbed of tourism and isn't the kind of place we'd normally go, but they have a family-themed amusement park and I got a fantastic deal on a hotel.  We saw a concert, went to the park, had a couple of nice dinners and it probably cost less than $300 for the whole thing.

We visited my cousin and her family on Nick's 8th birthday.  I wanted to take Nick to Disneyland and since they live so close, it was a no-brainer.  We had a wonder time and the best part is that although her son is 4 years older than Nick, his birthday is the day after so the boys celebrated together.  All my life I have wanted to eat at the Blue Bayou restaurant attached to the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland.  I made reservations (4 months in advance) and we had a wonderful birthday dinner for the boys.  I am honestly not sure if they enjoyed the restaurant and atmosphere as much as I did, but a good time was had by all.

The year Nick turned 9 I had to travel to Maryland on business. I wanted to take Nick with me and since by this time my dad and step-mother had moved to Virginia, Nick was able to spend the first couple of days that I was working, with my dad.  They had a wonderful time visiting the Air and Space Museum and going to the National Zoo.  When I completed my business, I rented a car and drove to their home in VA.  We spent the next 4-5 days visiting and seeing the sights including Monticello, Montpelier, and we even went hiking one afternoon in the mountains near their home.  Nick and I spent a couple of days alone exploring Washington, D.C. which was a blast.  We saw every single inch of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural history, walked down the mall and saw the World War II Memorial, the Washington Monument, and the Lincoln Memorial.  Nick rode in the subway for the first time ever (he LOVED that) and for our final day we stayed in a hotel near the airport, swam, and enjoyed a room service dinner. Nick LOVES room service, so this was a huge treat for him!

The 10th birthday trip was a little different: I invited my mom to go with us to Hilton Head, South Carolina.  I rented a condo on the beach and to make things more fun for Nick, we invited his best friend to come along.  We drove a day and a half to get there which wasn't too bad since both boys had their video games and were oblivious to everything else.  The condo looked like it had been dipped in beach tourist chic...it was cute, but every surface, wall and material had beach-themed decorations.  The best part of the trip was the ocean...it had been many years since I'd been able to swim in the ocean and it was fantastic!!!  We took a couple of day trips while we were there: one to see a lighthouse that ended up being a tourist trap, but we did go to Savannah for a day and were able to take a tour of the city which was fun.  I'd like to take another trip to Savannah some day, but that is a story for another time...

We ended up staying home for Nick's 11th birthday.  We unexpectedly had to move in the spring and all my vacation money was used paying for the move.  Nick had his very first birthday party/slumber party, so I don't think he minded very much. 

This year, when Nick turned 12 we were in Florida.  We decided to go to Disney World and my best friend, Suzanne, came with us.  We drove from Arkansas which ended up being almost a two-day drive each way (yuck).  We left a day early so we could spend a day at the beach.  We found out that Cocoa Beach was only about an hour away from Orlando, so we found a fantastic deal on a hotel and spent the night and part of two days at the beach.  As much fun as the Orlando parks were, the beach was pretty hard to beat!!  We rented a three-bedroom condo (again, a great price...research, research, research) which was about 20 minutes from the Disney parks.  There was supposed to be a shuttle, but we discovered that was not the case.  The lack of the shuttle and the fact that there was no cell reception in the condo were the only bad things about the trip.  My good friend, Angela, who had recently moved to Florida met us and spent two days at the parks with us.  What a fun time!!!  She and Suzanne became instant friends, so we all had a blast.
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I am already debating where to go next year and it is only July.  I am thinking maybe a trip to Maine might be in the cards.  I've never been there, but Nick is pushing for New York.  We'll see...

Interests and Obsessions

It occurred to me the other day that I can track Nick's growth over the years simply by thinking about the toys he's played with, and the interests he has developed. 

When he was really little, and I am referring to ages 1-6ish, Nick's thing was dinosaurs!!  He had a huge tub of them at home and another at my mom's house.  He knew the name of each dinosaur, what they ate, when they lived, and who hunted who.  Besides the dinosaur figures, we somehow accumulated 30-40 different books about dinosaurs that we read, studied, and learned from.  I saw we, because since Nick was so young during this phase, I was the one reading the books and helping Nick pronounce the dinosaur names.  I don't think I retained quite as much information from all of this as he did, but pretty close!  I have to say that even though Nick is older now and has moved on to a new love (more of that later), he is still interested in dinosaurs.

Age 6- 8ish saw the advent of the cars...hundreds and hundreds of match box cars. (well, not really hundreds, but several cardboard boxes worth).  He would take them out and sort them by color, type of car, size, etc.  Then he'd line them up.  I'd walk through various rooms in my house and find lines of cars curving and swirling from one end of the room to another.  I guess he played with them too, but this is what I mostly remember.  My friend Suzanne said her nephew did this too, so I suppose it is pretty common, but for the life of me, I can't figure out the appeal.  I guess it's a boy thing!

I should have mentioned earlier that in addition to the dinosaurs and cars, one of Nick's great loves is animals.  We have been going to zoos since before he could walk.  Every time we visit a new town, we make sure to go to the zoo.  Nick loves animals!!  We had as many books about different animals as we did about the dinosaurs. When he was tiny, he pronounced them "Aminals", which I though was so cute it about killed me when he began pronouncing the work correctly.  To this day, he has a rapport with animals that amazes me.  We went to visit a friend of my mom's a couple of years ago and she had a small house dog who she said, hated everyone but her.  Low and behold, not 10 minutes after our arrival, Nick is sitting in a recliner with this people-hating dog sprawled in his lap getting a belly rub.  Too funny!!

Age 9-present time, life is all about STAR WARS!!!  I made the mistake of introducing Nick to the original Star Wars movies thinking he might enjoy them.  MIGHT??? An obsession was born.  Nick has commandeered my original 3 movies and now owns the latest ones as well.  His room is a smorgasbord of light sabers, action figures, Star Wars posters, statues, Lego spacecrafts, a comforter, and a Wampa rug I bought him for Christmas.  Did I mention the action figures???  He has countless figurines, each with several tiny plastic weapons that find themselves transported all over the house because Nick doesn't keep them picked up and our dog Seamus is nosy!!  Luckily, so far Seamus has only chewed some of the figures.  I don't think he has actually swallowed any.  If he has, I am blissfully unaware of it! 

This Star Wars obsession made Christmas shopping pretty easy this year.  I don't know how long it'll last or what the next few years will bring (girls...shudder), but for now, I am enjoying his latest interest.  I am in NO hurry for him to grow up!

Menu planning (or how to avoid eating fast food after a busy day of work)

I enjoy cooking for the most part.  However, I have to admit that Nick and I have eaten out more than we should simply because I was busy with my job and didn't think about what we were going to eat for dinner, or I put it off to the last minute and didn't have anything that would thaw quickly.  Obviously eating fast food is NOT a good idea both for my weight which has been a constant struggle for me the last few years, or for our general health since it is so high in fat, calories and cholesterol.

To combat this, I've begun creating weekly menus.  I LOVE cookbooks...I mean really; I collect them like some people collect stamps.  Each week, or sometimes if I am feeling really motivated, every two weeks, I'll create a menu using recipes that are both tried and true and new ones that look interesting.

Here is how I do it:
1. I go through the freezer to see what kind of meat and vegetables are in there.
2. With that list in hand, I sit down with my cookbooks and look first for recipes that utilize the meat I already have.
3. Once I have decided on those, then I look for recipes utilizing that meat, that appeal to me in general.
4. I list the name of the recipe, the cookbook name and page number in a notebook I keep for just this purpose. 
5. In addition, for each entree I decide on, I pick two sides that I'll prepare to go with it.  They are usually simply things like a salad, vegetable, or some sort of bread.
6. As I decide on each days menu, I keep track of the ingredients I need for each recipe using a shopping list I found at Target that has EVERYTHING on it.  If I have the ingredient on hand, obviously it doesn't get written down, but if I need it, I list it then and there.
7. Often many recipes use some of the same ingredients, so I use tally marks to keep track of the quantity of a particular ingredient I may need.
8. Once I go to the store and buy everything I need, it is just a matter of looking at my menu for the week and deciding which dinner option appeals to me.  I do this every morning and once I decide on our dinner, I pull the appropriate meat out of the freezer to thaw.  By the time I am ready to cook dinner, the meat is ready and it is just a matter of preparing it.
9. No last minute decisions about what to fix, or wondering if I have all the ingredients.   Best of all, I seldom buy food that we don't eat, so there is much LESS waste which is a really good thing considering the price of food. Plus, I experience much less impulse shopping, so my shopping bills have actually decreased since I've been doing this.

Nick and I both enjoy the variety of dinner meals I prepare.  I have to admit that trying new recipes all the time is sometimes risky and not all together successful.  There have been a few that we HATED!! For the most part though, we've liked the recipes that I've tried. In addition, since I keep these menus in a notebook, I have a record of what we've eaten and I jot notes next to each one indicating if we liked it or not.  Sometimes, I don't bother looking at my cookbooks first, I go through my notebook and look at recipes we've already tried.

A bonus out of all this is that Nick is developing a real interest in cooking.  He told me in the car yesterday that he wants to be either a chef, an actor, or a WWF wrestler.  Of course, he is only 11, so time will tell. For now, I enjoy his help in the kitchen and he is learning a valuable skill that will serve him well as an adult.  To his future spouse...you're welcome!!

Arguing 101

I guess all parents make mistakes with their first-born children, but since Nick is my only one, I didn't get a chance to "fix" my mistakes on the next ones.

Arguing, talking back, sassing...call it what you will, but this is a big problem in our house.  I freely admit that I have allowed the problem to go on much longer than it should by not being consistent or firm enough when it first started becoming an issue, but in the beginning when it first began, I bought into all that crap about allowing kids to have choices and discussing your decisons with them instead of "telling" them what they were going to do.  And frankly,being both mom and dad all the time gets exhausting so there have been more than a few occasions when I simply gave in to get Nick to stop. 

Do other parents deal with this?  Nick has a particularly bad habit that I am working HARD to get rid of.  He will argue over and over and over without quitting when he doesn't get his way or if he is told something that he doesn't like.  Example: today in the grocery store, he wanted a pack of gum.  I told him no because we have a container of gum in the car.  When I've bought him gum in the past, he chews a piece for 5 minutes, throws it away and repeats with the next one.  This is repeated until all the gum in the pack is gone.  Waste of money and I simply wasn't in the mood to throw away 1.29 which is what this particular pack of gum cost.  All in all, it wasn't a big deal, but he proceeded to ask me over and over again, in a particularly whiny voice he has perfected over the years: "but why can't I?" and "pleeeeasse, Momma!!!!"   If he said it once, he said it 45 times.  I've been trying an experiment in which I tell him that I gave him my answer and as far as I am concerned, the subject is closed.  I refuse to discuss it with him again.  It is beginning to work, but not today...he didn't stop the whining and arguing until we finally left the store 10 minutes later.

I know that Nick began the habit of arguing with me years ago and because I didn't deal with it like I should have, it is at this point now.  My refusal to give in and refusing to argue with him is helping.  I am seeing an improvement and although he doesn't always like what I say, he isn't aways arguing about it.  Grrrr!  I try to imagine my sweet little baby boy when he acts this way, so I am less tempted to sell him to the traveling gypsies. (Are there even traveling gypsies around anymore?)

When we have these issues, I flash back to my days when I was married to Nick's dad.  He did the same thing...we'd have an argument or other problem, and he would hound me until he got his way or I conceded whatever point we were arguing about, in his favor.  One night, he followed me from room to room almost the whole night long, talking and talking until finally about 3:30 in the morning, I finally conceded the point to him. To this day, I have no idea what we were arguing about, but I remember him hounding me all night.  Nick is EXACTLY like his dad in this regard and that scares me because it is a particularly annoying trait.  I am trying to get this behavior to stop, and as I said I am seeing results, but it is slow and we certainly have backsliding like today at the grocery store.

I woul love to hear other points of view or ideas that have proven successful in addressing the arguing gene that my son seems to have inherited.  This blog is so new, no one is even reading it, but perhaps someday...

Welcome to my blog

I've been divorced for over 9 years, but even before that I was basically raising my son, Nick on my own.  During the 11 years that he's been on this planet, he has brought me more happiness that I thought possible.  However it hasn't always been a walk in the park.  This blog is my way of sharing my successes and failures in the hope that I'll learn from them and become a better parent along the way.  By sharing them with others, I am hoping to help anyone out there whoever feels inadequate, frustrated, fed-up, exhausted, or any of the other million and half emotions that rise to the surface when you have a child.  I can't even fathom doing this gig with more than one kid.  I've probably made enough mistakes with Nick to cover a football team's worth of children.  But more of that later.

Being responsible for the day-to-day raising of a child is not easy.  Nick's dad is in the picture, but since he is in Texas, he isn't a real part of Nick's daily life.  We have entirely different parenting styles and this has been the cause of some stressful situations over the years both with me and Nick and with me and Nick's dad.  I think overall, though, as time has progressed, we are more and  more on the same page about what we want for Nick and our expectations regarding his school work and behavior, which you'll see through some of my blog entries are not always what I'd like.

I hope others read these posts, but even if I am the only one reading them, my hope is by recording the experiences that both aggravate and thrill me, I become  better more patient and tolerant parent. 

Time will tell...