The Best List Ever

That was a lie.  This is going to be perfectly average list.  Perhaps even lower than average, as Atticus is sitting next to me in our rocking chair, peppering me with questions while I type ("How do your fingers know where the letters are without even looking?  How can you read so fast?  I know what S-T-O-P spells, do you?  When are you going to be done so I'm allowed to talk again?").

• It is 28 degrees outside right now, and the "Real Feel" (factoring in windchill and what not) is 20 degrees.  This is as warm as it's going to get today.  I know that in a couple months I'll look back and berate my pansy-November self ("That's almost above freezing- how can you complain about that?"), but at this point it feels pretty freaking cold.  This happens every year; I'm somehow shocked that cold is just so cold, I insist on running from the house to the car and back again (which perhaps helps explain the inverse relationship that exists between the number of injuries I sustain on a regular basis and the temperature outside- I also don't actually run; it's more of a mincing kind of jog that I'm sure is a beauty to behold), and I do things like shove the kids out of the van when dropping them off so I can shut the door and sustain the tropical environment I have created inside.  

• I found an article today that made me all kinds of crazy:  Childproofing Harry Potter

In it, a mother of a five-year-old explains that as she's been reading the first Harry Potter book aloud to her son, she's been childproofing it: making sure the characters are receiving proper punishment for wrong-doings, editing the scary parts, deciding that for her son, Voldemort wasn't going to try to kill Harry; he was just going to try and hurt him a little bit. 

I hear about this every day: parents trying to cushion and soften every tiny piece of their children's lives, making it as rosy and dishonest and just plain boring as a Christian romance novel.  It's a very short-sighted parenting strategy, because one day those little darlings- the ones who have had every twist and bump in the road straightened and smoothed over by their well-meaning parents- are going to be unleashed onto society, and you know what they're going to find?  The Real World.  The one where people die and senseless acts of cruelty abound and VOLDEMORT TRIES TO MURDER HARRY POTTER WHAT IS EVEN WRONG WITH YOU.

Believe it or not, this is my majorly scaled back reaction to this little article; when I first read it, I may or may not have dug my fingernails into my cheeks in abject frustration.  And lost it.  And died a little inside.  Keep in mind I was raised on classics like The Little Match Girl (still one of my favorites) and at no point did any of the adults in my life try to tell me that "No, see, she's just sleeping, there aren't really things like cruel fathers and dead mothers and little girls freezing to death in this world!"  To do so would have minimized that story's powerful message: one of compassion and charity and eternity and the significance of every human life.  

I also realize this woman has a five-year-old son.  I was a bit more protective when Adelaide was five, but then she got older and the children kept piling on and I learned to let things go, like making every meal perfectly balanced and bathing them every day and Doing Everything Just Right. 

And now I'm going to let this go.  (On the blog.  Don't kid yourself- I'm going to torture myself with this for weeks.  Milquetoast Children of America, BEGONE!)

• This has been kind of a whiney, ranty post, hasn't it?  I'll finish on a positive note:  Almost daily Atticus has been cutting out little squares of paper and coloring them purple, then giving them to me so that "you'll always have your favorite color right in your pocket."

Not So Much

And here's the second half of the list:  My Not-So-Favorite Things (January Edition):

• It's cold.  I've heard all kinds of people complaining about how much they want winter to be over already, but up 'til now, I was doing okay.  On Monday around noon, however, as the boys and I were driving home after running some errands, I looked up at the bank clock and saw that it read +2.  When you have to put the positive sign up there because it could very well be below zero, it's too cold.  And don't even get me started on the windchill.  While entering the library the other day, I saw a young mom dropping some items off at the book drop, her toddler standing next to her, wind blowing in his little face, crying and crying.  Now, I know what you're saying:  he could have been crying over any number things.  Trust me on this one:  his face and the screams coming out of his mouth reflected exactly the way I've felt this whole week when I dare set foot outside our front door.  Good news, though!  The weather guy on the radio said we've got a warm front moving through today, and the high is supposed to get all the way up into the lower 20's!

• Supper.  I've been in a cooking rut lately; I feel like I'm making the same old things over and over again, so I'm going to all the effort of cooking a meal but then don't even feel like eating it.  (Unless it's soup.  I always feel like soup when it's cold out, but Derek doesn't really like it when I cook potato soup Monday night, chicken noodle soup Tuesday, potato Wednesday, chicken noodle Thursday, etc, etc.)  There is a light at the end of the tunnel, though:  I made a new recipe, Crock Pot Salsa Verde Chicken Enchiladas, last night, and gracious, were they good- and fast, and easy, and did I mention delicious?  If you're in a food funk, you should definitely consider making these.  Tonight.

• We're stuck inside.  A direct result of bullet point #1, but I felt this one deserved its own paragraph.  Because Atticus and Caedmon and I?  We're about to kill each other most days.  I definitely can't be as lazy of a mom in the winter as I am in the summer; I keep having to come up with activities and things to do to keep them busy.  No shoving them out the back door and throwing a frisbee and some golf clubs at their backs when it's well below freezing outside.  Unfortunately.  

And that's it.  The fact that my list is all of three points long (and two are directly related) shows me I don't have much to complain about (OTHER THAN THE FACT THAT IT'S COLD).  I should probably take advantage of this (BRUTALLY) cold weather and make this or this or this with the kiddos.  Better than killing each other in a fit of rage-inducing cabin fever, right?

*Watch, now is when someone from Alaska will find this blog and leave me a comment about how I have no idea what cold really is.  And they would be right.*