Everywhere You Look

July 15th, 2010 | Posted by Alison Spath in Parenting - (6 Comments)

A month or so ago I stumbled upon a blog post about kids learning to ride a bike without pedals or training wheels. The basic idea is that without having to worry about pedaling, they can focus first on getting the hang of balancing on two wheels first. They can just sit on the bike seat with their feet on the ground, move their feet and walk. They’ll eventually start coasting along, balancing with the security and knowledge that they can easily catch themselves if they start to tip. Once they have the balance thing down, it’s much easier to then get the hanging pedaling – instead of doing it the other way around like you do with training wheels.

A New Era

June 30th, 2010 | Posted by Alison Spath in Parenting - (32 Comments)

The time period of our lives before now will be referred to as “Before the Haircut”. The time period from this point forward will be referred to as “After the Haircut”.

A couple of weeks ago Maxine decided to cut her own hair.

Cut Her Own Hair

Notice the missing bangs and partial mullet on the left side of her head?

When I asked her Why On Earth Would You Do Such a Thing? she responded that she wanted her hair to look like Ava’s American Girl doll “Elizabet”.

Dear Scale,

I would like to take this time to thank you for having so much in common with a well known antagonist.

Witch

You have taunted me, pointed fingers at me, cackled at me and threatened to steal away my little dog. (OK maybe not that last one. But then again I don’t have a dog.)

But now, thanks to some splashy children and your inability to bear so much water weight due poor placement at our new house, you are dead.

Strawberry Shortcuts

June 13th, 2010 | Posted by Alison Spath in Healthy Habits - (14 Comments)

In my continual quest to show my brood that food doesn’t grow on grocery store shelves, in conjunction with my desire to save money on produce whilst flying under the child labor law radar, we went strawberry picking this week.

Strawberry Sign

I’m trying to get you to believe that I’m this do-awesome-stuff-feed-my-kids-right-awesomely-incredible homeschooling mom, but really it was about getting the hell out of the house for a few hours and finding something different to do that wasn’t going to end with me paying a bunch of late fees to the library.

Child Labor

Barefoot Adventures

June 10th, 2010 | Posted by Alison Spath in Fitness - (6 Comments)

I’m not a professional barefoot runner (simply because no one has offered to pay me. yet.) but I got to thinking that I am sort of experienced at this barefoot running business. I ran barefoot on the beach in Florida once for about a mile. And I regularly run the recycling out to the curb barefoot, even in the winter. I also find that I’m often running in my dreams (and it feels like I’m running through molasses I might add) … and of course given that I am barefoot when I sleep, that surely counts for something in the barefoot running department, right?

Loafing Around

June 1st, 2010 | Posted by Alison Spath in Dinner Time - (17 Comments)

From my omnivorous days of yore, I think I miss meatloaf the most.  I mean seriously now – how have I been getting by without eating a loaf of meat these past three and a half-ish years? It’s a meatless mystery for sure, and it’s time to do something about it!

That’s a joke in case you couldn’t tell. Actually I miss turkey subs the most. OK that’s a joke too. Who needs turkey when you’ve got lettuce, tomato, onion, red, green and banana peppers and (gasp!) mayo and provolone cheese on a sesame seed roll from Wegmans? I rest my case.

New House Firsts

January 23rd, 2010 | Posted by Alison Spath in Morning Craziness - (12 Comments)

So I’ve got a couple of note worthy new house “firsts” to mention today.

1. Run the recycling bin out the curb barefoot and in my too-thin-for-29-degrees pajamas at 7:35 AM

Oh sure, I’ve done this plenty of times before at the old house, but yesterday was the first time I did this at our new house.

It’s a classic tale really, it goes a little something like this:

Let’s Learn Spanish

January 4th, 2010 | Posted by Alison Spath in Dinner Time - (25 Comments)

Well, I have no pictures of our woodland adventures today because we were not there long enough to take any pictures. Within about 10 minutes I had two very cold, cranky girls on my hands that not even a backpack full of refined carbohydrates (pretzels, granola bars, kashi crackers) could turn around. It WAS cold though, the thermostat in the car read 18 on the way home. Oh well. We tried.

Interestingly enough though, Ava said she “couldn’t wait” to go cross country skiing when we got home. Zak brought his childhood cross country skis to the house yesterday and Ava’s been in love with the idea of cross country skiing ever since.

For Old Aunt Zyne

December 31st, 2009 | Posted by Alison Spath in Late Night Craziness - (15 Comments)

So what did we do with ourselves today you’re surely wondering?

Why we took up the offer of a fellow homeschooling mama to blow this pop stand in favor of the YMCA and burn off some energy this afternoon.

Not me, mind you. I burned off a bunch of energy at 6 AM with my new running friends. These kids though? Yeah. They’ve got a ton energy to burn and let’s call a spade a spade: They are driving me nuts.

A Fish Tale

December 30th, 2009 | Posted by Alison Spath in Parenting - (18 Comments)

So admittedly, I’ve been doing very little cooking in recent weeks, this last week in particular. I feel like I’m just now getting my bearings in this new kitchen. I’ve been busy finding a place for everything, trying to figure out what’s going to work, what’s not, what I need and what I don’t, what can be donated, thrown away or put into storage to be dug out as needed all while wondering where the hell all this crap came from in the first place.