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I think the established wisdom about SAHM's (stay-at-home-moms) is that they need a bit of alone time to recoup their grace and splendour (aka sanity). Sharing misery or exhaustion I have often been urged to take a mommy-time-out at the spa or coffee-shop or restaurant or in the basement with the door shut. It is supposed to replenish us with love for our children and husbands and cooking and all that good stuff.

Since having the nanny two mornings a week and getting a bit more sleep in the past few weeks I have to say that the opposite has been true. After a few hours away from the kids I find myself reluctant to return to being a SAHM. I know we are not supposed to say this because it might tempt a malevolent deity to teach us a lesson, but I have been remembering how nice it was when Josh and I did not have kids and it was all quiet and there was room for self expression and self determination and many other phrases with "self" at the front. I miss it! I don't want a few stolen hours, or a job that drives all the tasks of a day into less time so I work two shifts. I just want privacy.

Some of you will be mentally rephrasing that to "personal space" but that is not it. I don't just want personal space. I want P-R-I-V-A-C-Y. I would like my desk to be private so that Frost and Wren do not smash my laptop and drop the bills all over. I want my breakfast to be private so I don't have to sit in squished avocado while I spoon dripping yoghurt into someone's mouth and pour milk into ovaltine from someone else and throw out the newspaper without reading it. I want our bedroom to be private so we can have sex if and when we want to - ok, after the kids are in bed. Unfortunately, half of them are in our bed still. The larger half of the children (by mass).

Of course, I had these desires before the respite nanny but I had forgotten how it felt to really kick back and drink a whole latte and then sit a while with an empty cup. That is the sweet time. The excess of solitude. The time when the ongoing assault of the child-noise is just soothed away. Who needs a massage when you have a nanny.

Of course, my moment of privacy as a blog author has come to an end abruptly as Wren cannot fathom how to play my voicemail since he has deleted it all already. He wants the voices to come out again. Sorry.

It is an appropriate ending to this observation.

Haircut happiness and lots of climbing

Its been less than a week since I last posted and I feel I need to write a book to cover all that has been happening.

First up, I had my long hair cut off. I went to a little local salon called Hair By Joey. Its not a salon strictly speaking, but a micro-salon in Joey's house in the Maple Leaf neighborhood. I have never before had a stylist LISTEN to me so intently and I am pleased with the result. Here is a picture of me with shorter hair with Wren in the background in the first one.



The next two pictures are from last week. During the last week in March we had the coldest weather on record. In the atmosphere above us (according to the NPR weather guy) they recorded the coldest temps in 32 years. As a result we had a rather freak snowstorm or series of snowstorms in the last week of March. In previous years I have been harvesting my first crop of lettuce and my potatoes were almost in. This year the soil temps are only mid 40's while we need 50's to plant. So, we are feeling the chill and my long coat had an extra workout.

Frost loved the snow and took the camera out in it to record his spring snowman. Wren was devastated that I would not let him romp outside (for long). It was just too damn cold! Wren is absolutely obsessed with being outside. Thankfully, we have had some mild sunny days this week and we have spent a long time each afternoon outside gardening. Wren loves it. He runs around and digs and tries to use the spade and the rake and picks up worms. It is going to be a fun summer with him.



I am trying to get our tax return finished so I am going to save some more Wren updates for another post. We are still here and more is coming soon!

Xeko Code LAMINA! Frost and the anagram

Frost and I are enjoying playing with our Xeko cards. As often happens, I bought a set at a thrift store for 50c and have had to spend $10 to supplement them with booster packs.

Our most recent accomplishment has been to solve Code LAMINA (aka Animal) in our Madagascar deck. After identifying the five code animals we decrypted the anagram EEDNNTOCC to spell "connected".

"All things in nature are connected" according to our Xeko wisdom.

We now have earned a new screen saver. Yippee!

Frost is very much in love with his hairy dwarf lemur furry.

"He is very cute. He is brown and has quite hairy ears. In real life he is about as big as a walnut but he is as big as an apple. I love him right as much as Wren. He is my little stuffy. I bought him and I am glad I have him. I love my hairy Dwarf Lemur. Signed - my hairy dwarf lemur and me" - Frost.