Dear ice cream truck owner(s),

At least twice a week we hear your truck’s jingle travel through the hot summer air. The sound goes on for 30, 40 minutes. We wait in anticipation when the truck will make the turn down our street. Yet it never happens. Tonight as we played in the backyard, we heard the jingle get louder and louder until there it was! Through our backyard neighbor’s yard we saw the ice cream truck traveling north. We implored the truck to take the next right, but the jingle turned quieter until we could no longer hear it. Each night we hear you there is no doubt you are in the trailer court south of us. While I can’t argue with your marketing plan, (there’s lots of kids in the trailer court), I beg you to visit the kids just north of there. Even though I grew up 10 miles out of town I remember on occasion an ice cream truck stopping at the corner by our house. Now I have a family and we live in town, but my kids have never experienced the ice cream truck. They have never stood next to the truck looking at the picture menu debating between a rocket pop or a fudgecicle. Or maybe an ice cream sandwich. Then again, maybe a push-up. They have never waited patiently for the man to disappear inside his truck and reappear in the window to hand them whatever they ordered. We have a book about an ice cream truck, which is a favorite at bedtime. Yet, it’s only a story to them. They still have not experienced the delight of hearing that jingle as the ice cream truck turns down their street, the mad dash for some money and finally some cool ice cream on a hot summer day. So once again I beg you. We would love to see the ice cream truck in our neighborhood.
Sincerely,
Stacy, Rion, Torii and Cordelia

I was inspired the other day so I wrote a couple more haikus. Enjoy!

Last week my sister and brother-in-law were home with their new baby. Cordelia loves babies and loved meeting her new cousin. That is until I held the baby. Cordelia threw a tantrum to end all tantrums. She has been extra clingy lately so a baby in mommy’s arms did not go over well. By the end of the week Cordelia was used to having baby around and I did get to hold her some more. While Cordelia still wasn’t pleased about me holding the baby, she at least didn’t throw a massive tantrum. I even let her hold baby, which she thought was so neat. She gave baby kisses and hugs and when I pulled baby away from her, Cordelia pulled baby back into her lap.

Wow, I have not posted in over a month. I would like to say I was off on some fabulous vacation having the time of my life, but in reality life has been pretty normal and ordinary. I have gone back to work fulltime so life feels a little topsy turvy right now. I’m sort of back into a groove so hopefully I don’t neglect the blog for so long again.

Torii is having the hardest time with me going back to work full-time. Every morning he asks me to stay home. My husband and I are lucky to be able to coordinate our work schedules so we don’t have to pay for daycare. I thought being home with daddy would make it easier on everyone, but Torii still wants his mommy. If everything goes as planned, in a few years, I’ll be able to cut back to part-time and once again be home with the kids more. It’s been a hard adjustment, but it definitely has it’s advantages. I only cook supper on the weekends, which is great. And to tell the truth, there are some days that I’m really happy I can leave the house and go to work.

Last week I would not have believed our city is facing what it is. In ’97 I was a freshman at NDSU and thought that was the worse flooding I would ever see. Our family is lucky to live in a place where flooding is not a concern, but I know many people who aren’t so lucky. Our thoughts and prayers go out to all those who are battling this flood. This has been a crazy week to say the least. I didn’t go to work on Tuesday because of the blizzard and only worked half a day today. I work south of Mandan and had to leave before they set off the explosions on the river and before 1806 closed. We live in south Bismarck, but our school is not one of the schools that is closed tomorrow. However, many families at our school are being affected by the flood. There were only six kids in Fred’s class today. When I went to pick him up from school, the whole school was eerily quiet. Everyone had also gotten things off the floor and bottom shelves, just in case the worse happens. Fred’s teacher said all the kids were great helpers with that. It is good to see the community rallying around those who need help. This is one of the reasons I knew this was were I wanted to raise my family. Hopefully things start to turn around tomorrow and we can get back to normal.

A couple of years ago I stumbled upon a great magazine called Brain, Child. Find them on the web at http://www.brainchildmag.com or they’re also on Facebook. This magazine is mostly made up of very well written essays. And while I might not always agree with the writer on a certain topic, it is certainly refreshing to read articles that aren’t always politically correct. My only complaint about this magazine is that it’s only published four times a year. In every issue they ask the readers a question and it’s not something lame like “how do you celebrate spring” like you’d find in a mainstream magazine. Some of those responses are published in the next issue. Sometimes they challenge the readers like they did last issue when they asked readers to submit haikus. There are some really great ones and I’m happy to say two of mine are included in the current issue. Here they are:

This is my new game

Throw toy on floor, mommy get

I throw toy again

In the tub tonight

Like to hear the sound I make

Hands hitting water

On Thursday we had a Mothers of PreSchoolers (MOPS) meeting. Cordelia has been so clingy lately and I never look forward to leaving her in the childcare. She cries when I leave, although she quickly gets over it. The lady in her room is really good about distracting her while I sneak out. Today I got down on the floor to show her some toys before sneaking off. There are also a couple of older kids in the room that help out. The girl sat down next to us. I thought Cordelia would grab hold of me tighter like she usually does. Instead she handed the girl her blankie and then sat in her lap. I couldn’t believe it. I headed for the door and as I was almost out Cordelia looked back. As I said goodbye I expected tears, but she was perfectly fine. In the main room, some of the moms were visiting and I mentioned how well Cordelia had just done when I dropped her off. A few minutes later I was told Torii wasn’t doing so well and he wanted to see me. He was sitting in his room crying. He really didn’t want to go to MOPS that day and he said he missed me. I told him he could come sit with me, but it would be pretty boring, but that’s what he wanted to do. He shared my breakfast with me and sat quietly next to me. I kept asking him if he was ready to go back to his room and he kept saying no. Later he finally said he was ready, but a few minutes after going to his room he returned to me once again in tears. I think Torii is having the hardest time with me working full time. He hates it when I go to work. He’s never been like that at MOPS, but I think he just wanted to be with me more than anything else. In a way it makes me feel really good, but it also makes me feel so bad when I do go to work. He always asks me what days I have off. He’s happy today since we’ll have the weekend together.

As far as working outside the home and raising children, I’ve tried it all. I’ve worked full time, part-time and not at all. Now we are once again trying something new. Since my job is dependant on the summer I have no choice, but to work full time in the spring up until the fall. A couple of summers ago, I worked full time while my husband watched the kids during the day and went to work at night. He didn’t get even close to enough sleep so we knew that wouldn’t work this time around. So now my husband is working part-time and being stay at home dad during the day. For the most part it is working out. It’s nice to come home and have dinner already made, but I have found it was something that was really hard to give up. On weekends I’m at a loss at what to do because I don’t do the grocery shopping or plan the meals for the week. I complained about cooking every night, but really it is something I enjoy. My husband isn’t a bad cook, it’s just that he’s an unhealthy cook. (I hid the butter on the bottom of the fridge way in back, don’t tell him). I like to cook healthy meals and I like variety. My husband doesn’t care for either. I still cook on the weekends, although the last couple of weekends have been so busy that I haven’t done much cooking at all. I have binders full of recipes that I don’t have the time to fix normally and now I really don’t know when I’ll have time to try them. Under the old system I always tried to pull out at least one new recipe each week. I never thought I would say I miss grocery shopping and cooking. Really, I liked to do it just because it was good for my family.

We had an enjoyable weekend. I didn’t get much done as far as chores are concerned, but that’s probably what made it so enjoyable. Fred went to his friend’s birthday party on Saturday. She had something to cover up her cast so she got to go swimming. There were a couple more friends from school and they had a lot of fun. I didn’t say much about the party around Torii, but the night before Fred started talking about it and got Torii all excited about it. I had to tell the poor kid he wasn’t going. He had so much fun playing with this girl the weekend before at Fred’s birthday party and he insisted they were friends and he should go to the party. As he cried at the prospect of not being able to go swimming, I explained to him he would meet new kids in school in the fall and he would probably get invited to parties that his brother won’t get to go to. That made Torii feel better, but then Fred started crying. Everyone finally got settled down and when the party came around on Saturday there weren’t any hard feelings on Torii’s side. Of course, I told him how lucky he was that he got to go to Grandpa and Grandma’s for an afternoon of sledding instead of the party. That seemed to make him feel a whole lot better.

On Saturday my oldest, Fred, turned six. The day belonged to him, but he didn’t want to do anything, instead opting to spend the day at home, which was fine for me. He did plan our meals for the day. For lunch the kids enjoyed some Kid Cuisine meals and for supper it was pizza. Fred likes supreme pizza, but I am the only other one that likes it so I don’t get it often. I was so happy that was his choice for supper.

On Sunday he got to bring his six pennies to church school. All the kids that had a birthday during the week get to bring pennies on Sunday and drop them into a church bank. The kids count along as each penny is dropped and then sing happy birthday. I had forgotten about the church bank until the kids started church school last fall. I didn’t even recognize the bank, but as soon as the first penny dropped, the memories came back. That bank has a distinct sound to it and I instantly remembered it from my church school days. Fred had been looking forward to this all weekend. His face lit up as soon as the music instructor asked if there were any birthdays. He was the first one down the stage.

That afternoon we had his birthday party at Snoopers. Four of his friends from school came. It was so fun to see them play together. All of this friends seem like really good kids and I’m glad they came. I think Cordelia also enjoyed playing at Snoopers. I brought her over to the toddler area since she is still a little small to climb up anything and she didn’t like the ball pit. She found a toy to play with on a table in the toddler area, but as she was getting back down from the chair she started to fall. I tried grabbing her, but my left hand missed and I grazed her face. I got her just right with my nail and scraped the side of her head pretty good. It looked pretty bad. Then after cake and opening presents one of Fred’s classmates fell and broke her arm. She has a cast on now and she is having her birthday party this weekend. It’s a swimming party so I hope she will be able to swim. I feel so bad. She said she still had a good time. It was a memorable birthday for sure.