Ohio Moms Blog

Much Ado About Nothing

On Saturday my family plans to pile into our already mostly packed minivan and head out on the road. We’re traveling from NE Ohio to Glacier National Park in Montana, camping all along the way at various state and national parks and returning in 21 days. This will be the second vacation of this type I’ve taken with my husband, the first since we’ve had our son. Did I mention I’m five months pregnant and we’re taking my 13-year-old niece along with us?

It has become clear that this trip, while hopefully as full of adventure and amazing experiences, will not be like the first one. In our first trip, we slept in the minivan with a tent attachment on it to let in air. This time we got a six-person tent, because two adults, a teenager and a toddler should never ever sleep that close if they have a choice. I’m sure the teenager in question appreciates this perspective, though the time my husband and I got stuck in the snow for over 20 hours before flagging down help makes all of that extra body heat sound good.

Tick Tock

Summer is here in NE Ohio and instead of thinking about finally being able to hit the pool or dress for warm weather without it suddenly getting windy, chilly or rainy…I’m starting to itch.

Soon my family will be loading up in our minivan and heading out for our vacation, a multi-state camping trip.  And while I am looking forward to the variety of birds I’ll see, the buffalo, the moose, the grizzlies, etc. there is one creature I am not looking forward to. The tick.

I’ve never actually had a tick on me. Which is to say, I don’t recall having ever had one attached to my skin. The amount of time I spent playing in the woods, catching tadpoles at the creek or climbing trees as a child tells me they may have just escaped notice and dropped off on their own. But I do remember my mother removing a few from our dog and my older brother using tweezers and a match.

Motherhood

 When I became pregnant with my first child I was convinced I was going to have a daughter. Her name was going to be Penelope and she was going to have thick curly hair and be tall like her father, and have green eyes and freckles like me.  When my husband started teasing me about the possibility of us having a son I shrugged it off. It just wasn’t a possibility in my mind. I would have a daughter. Period.

Then the day came that brought those certainties crashing down. At my 20 week ultrasound the tech announced we were having a boy. I was sort of stunned, but looked at my husband and gave him a half smile. “We’re having an Everett.” I said.

I felt the tears but managed to hold them back until we were in our car heading home, the ultrasound pictures were tossed onto the floorboard where they began to curl in the sunlight. My husband didn’t understand why I was crying, he thought it was odd.

Invasion of the Crumb Snatchers

It is spring and while we are not quite past the last frost yet , we have already had a month of warm weather and the occasional sunny sky. We’ve seen flowers come and go, birds are nesting and the dandelions have begun taking over our yards. The true sign of the end of winter, however, hit my house well over a month ago and has been relentless ever since.

I’m talking about ants. Pavement ants, in particular. You know, those itty bitty brown ants you see building hills in the cracks in sidewalk pavement, your asphalt driveway and between those stones that make up your patio? Yeah. Those. They also like to find the cracks in the side of your house or, in my case, in your foundation under your cement porch steps.

The First Step is Admitting the Problem

Hi. My name is Audrey, and I am a procrastinator.

It’s not a new problem, it’s one I’ve always had. In college I’d gather the research material needed to write my papers and create mock grant proposals. Then I’d wait until a few days before it was due to actually start the writing. Sometimes, it was the night before. Somehow this never bit me in the rear with a bad grade, so it became a habit.

I thought I had it kicked after school, though. I was so productive as a graphic designer my boss would often hold my work a day or so before showing it to a client because she hadn’t expected a same day turn around. Not exactly ethical, but it was her business, not mine. I was just proud to be the office efficiency queen.

Since becoming a parent, however, I’ve noticed a terrible trend emerging and it’s definitely the dreaded P word. Last January…I’m talking 2009, here people… I started making my son a quilt. It is a gorgeous quilt and it took me a month to complete just the facing, it has so many tiny pieces puzzled together. But that’s where I stopped. The facing. I was intimidated by the piecing together of the middle padding and the backing and the actual quilting of the three layers, so I stalled out.

I haven’t finished it yet.

There's an App for Naps

Recently my family got together with some friends to get our gardens started during the recent warm weather. We were saving money on renting a tiller by splitting it between three families. While we were finishing up at the third house the little ones were starting to get cranky for their afternoon naps. Being at someone else’s house for a nap doesn’t really work for my son. He will sleep in his car seat while we are driving and he will sleep in his crib. In cases of extreme exhaustion he’ll even sleep in his grandmother’s lap at his aunt’s wedding reception while Billy Idol is blaring. But not at a friend’s house in a pack n’ play in perfect silence.

While I was chasing my cranky kid around our friend went for a drive with her daughter to get her to sleep. When she returned she did something that caught me off guard. She left her toddler in the car in the driveway while she came in for lunch. But she wasn’t leaving her unattended, technically, because she left her iPhone in the car with her.

Apparently there is an iPhone application that acts as a baby monitor. If there is any noise in the car the phone automatically dials the programmed number, in this case the father’s cell phone. I can remember being 18 and seeing my sister-in-law leave my niece in her locked vehicle in a driveway and thinking how odd and dangerous it was. And I had similar feelings this time. We couldn’t see the car and she had left the doors unlocked, but there was that phone application giving the illusion of safety.