Triangle Mamas

An Evening with the Elves at Marbles

Recipe for Holiday Fun

by Abby

Ingredients

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1 Pajama-clad toddler or preschooler

20-30 of Santa's elves

1 Courtyard of "real" snow

1 Two hour serving of Live holiday music

2 Adult beverages (Fat Tire for the Daddy, wine for Momma)

3 Plates piled high with chicken, mac & cheese, carrots, and cinnamon apples

Cupcakes, cookies, and other yummy desserts (optional)

In a large children's play museum, combine the first 6 ingredients. Add cupcakes and desserts to taste.

Once thoroughly combined, you'll be rewarded with a very merry and entirely jolly Triangle family.

Although very busy with merriment making, Abby does still try to make time to document all the festivities over at her personal blog, My Sweet Babboo. If she finds herself too busy baking or gift wrapping, she may just Tweet about it since 140 characters is much faster than an entire blog post.

Read Locally

I'm exhausted -- but for once, it's not my children's fault. This time, I blame John and Ray. And Conker, Jolie, Si, Buck and Nel.

This cast of characters kept me up late last week -- not at a rock concert or the newest club (seriously, I should be so cool), but sitting on my own couch unable to stop reading. John is a friend from college and more famously known as John Claude Bemis, the newly-published author of The Nine-Pound Hammer. Ray is the main character in his book, the first in a trilogy that follows the orphan as he and the others embark on the story that's been occupying my late-night mind.

Inspired by his work as a teacher and a bluegrass musician, John has created a novel that blends the fantasy elements of a Harry Potter story with the landscape of American folklore. Here's the blurb from the cover:

"Twelve-year-old Ray is haunted by the strangest memories of his father, who Ray swears could speak to animals. On a quest to find out what happened to him, Ray falls in with a band of young sideshow performers traveling through the South in a rickety old train. For the first time in years, Ray feels at home.

But something strange is going on. From a locked train car, Ray hears hypnotic singing. And the performers themselves -- the strong man, the fire-eater, the blind sharp-shooter... their talents seem almost magical. Ray investigates and discovers that the old stories about John Henry and Johnny Appleseed are true in ways he never would have dreamed, that an ancient evil these characters fought is rising again, and that Ray himself may have a place in new stories only now being written."

One reviewer called it "a steampunk collision of heroes, mermaids, pirates and good old-fashioned Americana." I can't quite do it justice, although I do like the word "steampunk" -- but I can tell you that the book was hard to put down. And I think it's amazing that someone I know has written and published a real live book for middle-grade readers (which apparently includes me). 

Since John lives in Hillsborough, if you're trying to shop local this holiday season, you get a double word score if you buy his book from an independent bookseller. If you want to sample before you buy, John will be reading and making music in Charlotte on Friday, Dec. 4, and in Durham on Saturday, Dec. 5. Be sure to tell him I sent you!

Note: No compensation was offered or received from the author, his publisher or any of the stores linked here in exchange for this post. However, I am hoping that it might entice John to send me an advance copy of the second book in the series, which is due in stores next summer.

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Cyndi can also be found at Junius & Pippi Take the Cake, where she likes to list more of her favorite books for children and grown-ups.

Lost in Durham

by Abby

See this park.

Looking at this map, you'd never guess that this park is cloaked in an invisibility shield. You'd never know this because you would probably make all the right (or left) turns and end up zipping down the slide or flying in the swings in under five minutes.

I, on the other hand, fell victim to the park's invisibility shield for a full hour as I looped around and around just catching glimpses of what I knew must be the space in which the park was contained while never actually finding the entrance.

Sadly, I can't even use the excuse of it being in an unfamiliar neighborhood. This park is seriously right behind Local Yogurt and with as much time as I spend there, I should know my way around.

Instead, I will blame the trees which provided superior camouflage; the technology that was bombarding me (You try melding written directions from a friend with Google maps on your iPhone all while your GPS is screaming at you to "Turn around when possible."); the missing street sign on the corner; and what is obviously a secret government experiment in land disappearances.

Abby is constantly lost both on the actual road and on the road of life. But she does usually persevere and eventually finds her way. You can read about all her journeys at My Sweet Babboo or follow her ramblings on Twitter.

Bliss in the Bull City

by Kelly

Unlike most people that I know in the Triangle, I can say that I spent most of my life growing up here, in Chapel Hill to be exact.  It’s often hard to believe that it was 23 years ago that my family picked up all it’s “Yankee” roots & headed down here from Connecticut.  So, you can imagine how surprised I was when I met my now husband & found out that not only was he a Durham, NC native, but his parents were as well – a rare find in this area.

Needless to say, I was a footloose & fancy free teenager finishing her first year of college at East Carolina University when I met my husband.  We were both eighteen, but he was just graduating high school.  It was during the summer of 1996 that we dated & both had what we thought would be a “summer fling,” if you will.  I’ll admit, my friends were a bit skeptical upon meeting Seth – growing up in NC he was a bit of a clean cut, country boy, and not the typical guy I might have dated.   I was very much a “wild child,” with an unusual sense of fashion, a love of jam band music & a fondness for grungy boys.  But, something about this guy was different & 13 years & one child later I couldn’t be happier.  We often refer to ourselves as ‘Dharma & Greg’ – the years have changed us a bit, but my husband it still the picture of maturity & responsibility, while I am still very much a dreamer & a kid at heart.

He is the reason that we now live in Durham, and that I have such a love & appreciation for NC.  A common thread between us is a love of the great outdoors – camping, hiking, backpacking, boating, cycling – we have experienced the best that NC has to offer. While we have not gone camping yet with our 2 ½ year old son Wyatt, we talk about it often & wonder which favorite spot in NC we will revisit with him in tow.  Living in the Triangle allows you to get to the Smoky Mountains or the Crystal Coast with the ease of a 3-4 hour trip.  Couple with that the fact that our closest friends, my sister, brother, parents & in-laws all live within 15 minutes of us, and we rarely complain about not getting a night to ourselves.

When Kelly is not reminiscing about her college days, she can usually be found chasing after her toddler son Wyatt, and blogging about it at Monkey Man, if she hasn't run out of steam at the end of the day.

You mean I'm supposed to chew food?

I don't know how many times I've spent a morning dreaming of a day when Starbucks will add a train table if not an entire play area to their coffee shops. I mean, it could just be open for the mid-morning and late afternoon hours when caffeine-addicted moms need a place to get a hit while still entertaining and socializing their kids. Wouldn't it be great?

I know, I know, McDonald's now has McCafe's and Barnes & Noble even has Starbucks and train tables, but I hate McDonald's and Barnes & Nobles has shelves and shelves of books just taunting my toddler to destroy. I'm talking a gated play area where a coffee bar is within sight distance. Wouldn't it be loverly?

What I don't understand is why more places don't follow the lead of one of my favorite local restaurants, Blue Corn Cafe. This place has a separate rooms for patrons with kids and patrons without. It's so nice to not have to worry about your toddler throwing a tantrum because he wants his own bowl of guacamole to dip in because there's another one loudly demanding his quesadilla at the next table.

As if separate but equal dining spaces weren't enough, the with-kids dining room has a play area stocked with toys, a chalkboard covered wall, a play mat, and a full library of VHS kids tapes. While you are getting sat down and offered a menu, your preschooler is digging out a fire truck from the toy basket. I can't even remember another restaurant where I've been able to actually read the menu rather than just randomly selecting an entree.

Now I understand the importance of teaching your child to sit politely at the table, but there are just some nights I would like to sit and sip a really yummy Mojito without slurping it down between reiterations of "Sit down. Be patient." We work on manners at home and at other restaurants, but at Blue Corn, I prefer to sit back, munch on tasty fried plantain chips, and watch as my son lies on someone else's floor rolling cars back and forth.

If you're like me and could sometimes use the "dining out" option that really is a bit of a break, or if you just like really good Latin-American food, then Blue Corn Cafe on Durham's Ninth Street is the place for you.

Who knows? We might just see you there.

Crossposted at Abby's personal blog My Sweet Babboo where she doesn't just write about food. Although come to think of it, she does write about food a lot there too.

pick yourself up, dust yourself off

It’s been one of those days with my future DRAMA MAJOR that leads me to question not only my sanity, but whether or not I should have ever become a mother.

And it’s barely noon.

Any of you have mental illness in your extended family medical history? I do. Some very bad seeds? Me, too. Unhealthy patterns in parenting? How about anger management issues, depression, and passive-aggressiveness?

That’s just my adoptive family. My biological family was one big Korean soap opera. And it’s harder to detach myself from the crazy in their family, since I am actually genetically related to them. At times, when I feel particularly shitty as a mother, I imagine that all the bad parenting qualities in both my families have coalesced into one perfect storm of nature and nurture and settled in me, with my daughter as the unsuspecting victim.

I remember when I first learned the truth about my birth family – specifically, about the abuse and misery my birthmother had inflicted on my sisters, and the fact that she was a truly disturbed woman who hadn’t wanted me because I was “another girl.” Also, I was born so prematurely, the doctors were sure I’d never lead a “normal life.” As it turns out, I was the luckiest of my birthparents’ daughters, because I was the one they gave up.

The night I learned all of this, I couldn’t sleep. Of course, it might have had something to do with being eight a half months pregnant with Abigail at the time. I just lay there in bed, hour after hour, asking myself, “Am I going to be like them? Am I going to be a bad parent?”

I think that most people have the potential to be good, even great parents. The truth I had never really confronted – until that night, facing down the skeletons in my family closet for the first time – was that most people also have the potential to be extremely bad parents. I decided I had probably not inherited some “bad parenting gene” that would doom me and my children to a life of unhappiness. But I would still have to be aware of my limitations, my weaknesses, and yes, my sins. I would have to be humble.

Sometimes, when everything is going well with Abigail and we’re clipping along for weeks on end with no major disasters or meltdowns, I forget to feel thankful for the relative peace. I may even get a little cocky, and start to think that I have something to do with how smoothly things are running. But days like today keep me humble and well-acquainted with my own faults, lack of patience topping the list.

I hate feeling so aware of my own powerlessness, when I can do nothing to make my daughter feel any better; when I put her down early for a nap and then punch a pillow in sheer frustration; when I sit numbly on the couch with a cup of tea in my hands and seriously – seriously – question whether someone like me (lazy! impatient! selfish! only child! needs alone time! has latent CRAZY GENES!) should have ever had a child in the first place. Too late to spare Abigail, but maybe she doesn’t need a sibling. Maybe, I think to myself, maybe there’s somewhere I could get a tubal over my lunch break.

Here’s where I should stop feeling sorry for myself and say something uplifting, something positive about motherhood. If I wanted to, I could say what a lot of parents say – that I’m aware of my faults, but that having a child has given me the perfect opportunity to work hard to correct those faults for the sake of another person. And that’s true, except you don’t have a child as a means to self-improvement. Abby deserves a good mom now, not a good mom-in-training.

If I were grading myself as a mother today, it would be pretty grim. Not even a gentleman’s C. But she’s napping, praise God and all the saints, and I have another few minutes to repair my tattered nerves. A deep breath, a sip of tea, and some lunch are in order.

Soon she’ll wake up, and I will still be here. I’m leaning towards still being here, anyway. And then we’ll start all over again.

Nikki has officially made it to bedtime and is about to start drinking heavily. This entry was written earlier today and cross-posted at A Small Song.

Le Sigh

I am convinced that the Triangle region of North Carolina is home to some of the worst drivers in the country. I mean, I'm totally cool with people who drive the speed limit, but people who drive 10 under on a road where most people drive 10 over? That's just annoying. Or worse yet, people who come to a stop, A STOP, at an on-ramp to wait  for a large enough clearing in freeway traffic to merge. Could they have not thought ahead and started looking at the traffic patterns before they got to the very end of the merge lane?

I guess my driving frustrations are starting to show. Today while riding in the car, once again frustrated at my fellow drivers, I heard Linus let out a big sigh. Unsure if I heard right, I questioned him, "What?" He again gave a very dramatic sigh. Thinking back, I realized that he was mimicking what I had just done when some irresponsible driver cut over 3 lanes of traffic while driving 20 under to catch an exit.

Lucky for me, a sigh was all I had for that driver. It used to be worse. I mean, my mom did teach me the superior communication ability of my middle finger in those situations.

Crossposted at My Sweet Babboo. When she's not journeying from playgroup to Target to Local Yogurt, Abby can be griping about it on Twitter or her personal blog, My Sweet Babboo.

Fourth Festivities

Even if you aren't heading to the beach for the holiday weekend, there is still plenty of fun happening right here in the Triangle. Here in Durham you even have parade options for the younger set.

Your first option is to participate in a 60 year running parade of children over in the Watts-Hillandale neighborhood. Bring your bikes, wagons, or strollers all decked out in red, white, and blue and join the parading masses as they celebrate the independence of our country, the spirit of children, and the comfort of good neighbors. Festivities begin at 10AM at the neighborhood's park in the 2200 block of West Club Blvd and will continue following the parade in Oval Park.

If your a bit more of a procrastinator, like me, you can opt to join in the less historical but just as fun Central Park Children's Parade. To participate, just bring your wagons and bikes to Central Park. The good folks from The Scrap Exchange will be on hand with plenty of re-purposed supplies for turning your tiny transportation into a spectacular Independence Day float. Central Park and The Scrap Exchange is located in the 500 block of Foster Street. Decorating begins at 9:45AM with the parade scheduled to depart at 10:45AM from the corner of Foster and West Corporation.

Both options are loads of fun and last just long enough to make sure that your baby, toddler, or preschooler is home in time for a quick lunch and afternoon nap. They are definitely gonna need that nap, and you too, if there is any hope of them staying awake to enjoy fireworks.

For other 4th of July activities going on around the Triangle, check out MyNC where they have a round up of the local festivities.

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Abby, an avid pie baker, is hoping for a long enough afternoon nap to throw together a cherry pie. Of course, if she gets too involved in blogging or Twitter, she'll get nothing done. You can read about all of her projects at her personal blog, My Sweet Babboo.

Maybe She's Just Having A Bad Day

My typical method for coping with being home with children all summer is to simply not be home.  Don’t get me wrong, I am a homebody at heart but I find that keeping us all out of the house as much as possible is best for everyone’s mood.  Out in the world, either at the museum, pool or the river, I find that I am more present with my kids.  I can interact with them without being distracted by other things that I think I should be doing.  No work, no household chores, no Facebook or blogs – just my children and me.

It sounds so perfectly serene, doesn’t it?  Except lately, each outing seems to end with my turning into that mom that is pitied, judged or held up as an example.  Take for instance, our last trip to the Museum of Life and Science.  Dean was bitten by what he described as a “small black spider” and his hand instantly began to swell.  He was in pain and we were the furthest point from the car that we could be so I rounded up my crew and we began to walk back to a place where we could get ice.  Not knowing if he had a Black Widow bite or something worse, I was worried and getting frustrated with Logan who was not cooperating.  Dean walked ahead and then was quickly out of my sight.  When we reached the spot I had assumed he would go, there was no Dean.  We had to go find him.  Jess, however, had the idea that we would stop and eat at the café and would not be consoled.  I was trying to stay calm but patient I was not.  We were all hot, hungry and tired.  I had to keep walking with a six year old having a tantrum and a two year old having a sit-in on the middle of the sidewalk. 

So I was shouting because I had one child not moving and too big and wet from water play to be carried, one child sobbing and walking away from me in his anger, and my oldest nowhere to be seen.  And people were looking.  I had one mom ask Logan where his mommy was and a staff person ask me if the crying boy belonged to me.  When Dean caught up with me, I yelled, “Where were you?!”   I think part of me wanted to be loud about it because I wanted everyone to know that I was scared - that I had good reason to be crabby with my kids.  So, yeah, I’m that mom.

Last week while Dean was at camp, I needed just a few things from the grocery store.  I took the youngest two into Whole Foods since we were in that neighborhood.  We started off so well.  Jess wanted to push the carriage and was navigating the tiny aisles full of obstacles carefully.  Logan chose some peaches that he literally chucked into the cart.  I winced at that bruising fruit and suggested we put the peaches in a bag since throwing them hurts them and makes them yucky.  Logan chose a few more and carefully placed them in the bag.  We moved on.  By the time we found the milk, I was less patient and just wanted our errand to be finished.  The quick stop was turning into a long, drawn-out affair and I was no longer interested in quietly using my “nice words.”  As I was trying to choose the coffee, firmly hold Logan in place in the carriage so he wouldn’t jump (again) and field Jess’ relentless stream of questions, I became increasingly snappish.  It was time to leave whether or not we had everything we needed.  In the checkout lane, a cashier suggested that I take the kids shopping at Super Wal-Mart instead.  “Excuse me?” I said.  Perhaps I didn’t hear him correctly.  He repeated himself adding, “If that is how they are going to behave…” I paid for my items and left the store – but not before accidentally ramming the cart into Logan’s face.  I do so like to make an exit scene.  Yeah, I’m that mom.

I’m the mom who goes somewhere with her kids and then when they leave, everyone else knows her children’s names.  I’m the mom who is constantly trying to choose between disciplining a child and letting him run amok.  I’m the mom who has to physically pull her child out of the pool because he doesn’t want to leave.  I’m the mom you hear hissing through clenched teeth, “You have until I count to three…” Luckily, no one has questioned what happens on three.  We’ve never had to find out.  I’m the mom who handles her children’s behaviors, no matter what scene ensues.

I’m the mom who has many tools in her toolbox to manage her children.  I’m the mom who sometimes runs out of tools.  I’m the mom who sometimes gets exhausted using the rights words all the time and making a game out of basic tasks.  I’m the mom who sometimes just needs her kids to get into the damn car seat already for the luvaGod.

I’m the mom who is sleep deprived and looks it.  And I’m the mom who might need her anti-depressant dose increased and her caffeine dose decreased.  I’m the mom who needs your compassion and understanding.  I might welcome a sympathetic smile rather than your judgmental and snide remarks.  I’m that mom and I’m every other mom.

I’m the mom who calls the store manager when she gets home to complain about the cashier’s rude comments and threatens a boycott on behalf of all moms.  (You with me?)  I’m the mom who can say her children are difficult but will take offense if someone else says it because I am their mom.  I live with them.  I am the mom raising them.  And I’m the mom who loves them.  I am well aware of their faults – and I love them anyway.

I’m not the mom that I thought I’d be.  Sometimes I have it all together and lots of times, I just don’t.  But my kids aren’t the kids I thought they would be either. I’m trying.  And I know they are too.  And 99% of the time, I wouldn’t change a thing.  But you’ll understand if you don’t see me shopping at Whole Foods for a while, won’t you?

This is a Triangle Mamas original post posted by Susie.  Susie occasionally blogs about the joys and mishaps of being a mom to three boys at At Home With Me when she is not busy being humiliated by pretentious store clerks.

Peanuts and Cracker Jacks

If you're looking for Springtime activities for kids here in the Triangle, look no further than DBAP. That's Durham Bulls Athletic Park for the uninitiated. With sunshine, hot dogs, and cotton candy, it's got all the ingredients for a perfect kid day. Plus, with ice cold beer, baseball, and cotton candy, it's a fun for the parents as well. Linus, slathered from head to toe in sunscreen, attended his first game on Education Day. Although much busier than originally planned, it made for an exciting atmosphere with enthusiastic renditions of "Charge!" and the Sponge Bob Square Pants theme song.

Our family attended an 11AM game which worked perfectly around naptime but there are also early afternoon games and evening games. If you splurge ($2 more per seat), you can get seats under the awning which, for a fair child like mine, will ease your fears of sunburn. Linus was enthralled with the game, crowd, and Wool E. Bull and managed to sit through 6 innings during which we indulged in all the regular ballpark foods.

Just don't forget to purchase your Bulls hat before you leave the ballpark so you can root for the Bulls even outside of the ballpark.