Category Archives: Grandparents Walston

Paternal contribution to the showering of attention.

Every 100 Years a Post

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When the babes were tiny, I had a life that accommodated my ability to create limitless prose about the awesomeness (and sometimes not-so-awesomeness) of parenting. Within the pages of this blog I got to wax poetic about the crazy, the fun, the angry, the harrowing, the adorable, the hilarious. In looking for an old photo recently, I found myself falling down the rabbit hole of reading old posts that in some cases had me literally, laughing out loud, then almost crying. Picture Chevy Chase in Christmas Vacation sitting in his attic watching 8mms – and yes I was wearing a turban.

I think the thing that hit me like a ton of bricks is how much time has slipped past since the kids were born. This year Stelly turned 10. P is almost 8. As I sit here writing, Stella is in the kitchen helping plan dinner and unloading the dishwasher. Porter is at a friend’s house for a sleepover. They are big kids now. Thoughtful, mature, fun, silly big kids. It makes me realize that time has disappeared in a blink. Take this post for example: Quality Family Time. Be sure to look at the photo set – it is the true heart of the story.

It makes me incredibly mournful to accept that my writing has been buttoned up for a period. I know it is not the end, but it is halted for this period of my life where parenting, and retailing and wife-ing and participating have become the larger priority. And I can dig that. I love to write. I love that I have written, and I know I will find my way back to it at some point.

But. I have done my best to evolve my documentarianism. Even though I can’t write every day, I have done my best to post as close to every day as I can manage. Anything. Something. So a picture makes its way along. Or even just a 140-ish character sentiment.

Last year became the evolution to a photo-a-day. I would give myself a C+ in my overall job in this task. But it’s a starting point.

And so, Happy New Year to all of you. I am so ridiculously lucky to have my endlessly supportive family and my loyal, fun, zany, smart, silly, witty, scandalous, friends who make me smile, and make me feel whole, real, grounded and loved. I hope with all my being that my children get to experience such greatness in their lives.

May 2014 be the beginning – or continuation – of the next something great for all of you.

Here’s the wrap-up for holiday season 2013. (And for those of you wondering, yes that is a Millenium Falcon birthday cake.)

Enjoy!

Holiday 2013 from natalie on Vimeo.

Bubble-Palooza

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So aside from hauling the kids back to their trailer every night during their visit, my in-laws also entertained them with pre-planned, coordinated, age-appropriate, creativity-inducing, skill-building, MENSA-entry-level activities including (but not limited to) the bubble extravaganza that ’bout near drove my poor father-in-law to drink straight from the wine bottle. Massive quantities of WATER and SOAP were involved and so were my children– need I say more?

stella
(click photo to see the entire set)

My Summer Vacation: 2009 Edition

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Okay, so we recently completed our annual pilgrimage to our homeland. I know you know this, and I know you have been waiting. But life returned from vacation, does not equate to life without interruption, and I have spent the better part of the week trying to exhale.

Basically, it was pretty much our typical summer outing. We briefly interrupted regular scheduling by immediately heading out East and leaving our precious cargo behind with the grandparents. Those kooky grandparents – they always insist they love it, but I know, deep down, that is the heat hallucinations talking.

We enjoyed our visit with Andrea and Brian – it was almost like we had never left. Except for the part where their house actually had furniture this time. I’m fairly certain that in the 7 days we were there we doubled our physical selves. I can’t even blame it on water weight because I was so busy experiencing the lovely, sweaty, goodness of the deep south in the summer. We ate infamous hot dogs of rural Hanover County, notable BBQ and sides (um, collards, oh yeah), elegant thai cuisine, greasy local faire and the piéce de resistance: the bar and grill that was prominently featured throughout every season of Dawson’s Creek. There is quite a story surrounding Brian and I’s relationship with Dawson’s Creek – his while he was recovering from cancer, mine while I was stuck on the couch breastfeeding without any cable. I don’t need to tell you how magical of a moment it was for us to each witness the life-sized autographed poster on the wall. It was almost like Pacey and Joey were right there. Sigh.

While gone in NC, the kids effortlessly transitioned between grandparents, living large with all the sights and experiences of summer. The Grandparents Walston kept them busy with swimming, science museum, library and art projects. The Grandparents Anderson kept them busy with rustic cabin living and blow-up backyard water features. There has also been this bizarre ongoing ritual that my kids have established with my mom called “Wedding”, which explains why Porter seems to always be dressed like a low-rent street-walker these days.

And speaking of Porter, this brings me to the part of the vacation that will, undoubtedly be the most triumphantly memorable. Don’t get me wrong – this was a wonderful, and memorable vacation full of friends and family and relaxation – however, when I remember this summer, it will be memorable for one gigantic reason: by the time we returned from North Carolina, Porter was 2/3 of the way potty trained. I KNOW! We were periodically updated on the progress via the various phone calls home, but it wasn’t until we returned that we stood witness to the beautiful glory of Porter running in announcing that he had to go pee, and shooting off to take care of business. Plus, yes there is a PLUS! HE GOES AT NIGHT TOO!!! Wakes up, announces his intentions and heads on in. It is like a Christmas miracle. Except that it is July. So, back to the 2/3rds part. He refuses to wear underwear (will only wear pull-ups) and he REFUSES to poop on the toilet. I have been trying to force the issue by stripping him naked from the waist down the moment we get home. Watcha gonna do now, son? Yeah, that’s what I thought – you’re gonna wait me out until I put you back in a pull-up so you can run into your bedroom and hide in the corner and poop -THAT’S WHAT! So close, yet so far away.

Riding on the high of 2/3rds of the way potty trained, we headed back to our freshly painted home. WOO HOO! No more fluffy bunny yellow and white. Now it is a more appropriate and earth-toned green and brown. Viva lá 1960s!

I gathered up photos from three different cameras and 3 different phones to compile this photo set -which explains the variations in quality and content. Unfortunately, I didn’t end up taking very many photos – except for the ones capturing the Arbogast tattoo outing, and the gist of the set is my mom’s camera. I’ll see what else I can round up and add them as I get them.

porter & stella
(click to see the entire set)

111 exterior paint job
(click here if you want to see 16 variations of angles of our newly painted exterior, otherwise, this one will probably do.)

Another weekend at the Walston Labor Camp

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This weekend we removed and disposed of 3,380 pounds of green waste.

To clarify: the “we” being Steve, myself and the latest round of suckers visitors, Steve’s parents. Consider yourself warned: if you come to our house with the intention of “helping” you will be automatically issued a project, a Walstonling and your very own bottle of ibuprofen. Come to think of it, our house has become much like that of the Hotel California: You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

You see, in our day to day lives we are deprived of any sort of productive activity that doesn’t involve the counseling or redirection of two emotionally volatile children. So you can understand how it is that we lose our ability to think rationally when it comes to getting to focus on actual task oriented activities. Activities that can be accomplished without having to stop every 5 minutes to keep someone from, say, drawing on an inappropriate person or thing with a Sharpie pen, or hauling the contents of the sand table into the kitchen.

The name of the game this weekend was berry abatement. As in, gone. Period.

We started with this:

house

house

And ended up with this:

house

house

As a matter of course, we all also ended up looking like this – basically, like we have been in a scratch fight with a badger:

steve

Not only were our guests kind enough to deal with the daily toil of yardwork, but they were also here to experience the magic and wonderment that is time-change-sleep-transition. I can say with some certainty that the idiot who came up with time changes DID NOT HAVE CHILDREN. This household already gets up at dark-thirty. Now, thanks to the lame time change, we get up an hour BEFORE dark-thirty. So not only did Bill and Judy get to give up a perfectly good weekend wrenching their backs and pulling their muscles and being ordered around by Porter the Angry Dictator, but they got to have the equivalent of the WWE in their bed by 5:00 a.m.

As I have been reflecting on all the work-vacations people have been providing lately, I think I have realized that we are missing the bigger picture here. One of my former professors from school started a B&B where people come to get the “farm experience”. As if. I remember thinking it was the most ridiculous idea in the world. What crack-smoking maniac would pay to go on vacation and actually pay to work? Oh. Well. I think I have just answered my own question.

Perspective

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If I were to give a brief assessment of the last month, I’d say that we have been moving forward, but in a sort of bumpy and uncomfortable is-anyone-having-any-fun-here? kind of way. Unfortunately, it is this state in which our lives currently exists that prohibits me from being able to write a post without quickly digressing to a boring rant. Although I write this blog as much for myself as for anyone else, even I don’t really feel like coming back to read a sniveling diatribe about how tired, overwhelmed and depressed I am. Booorrriiiinnngggg.

One of the things I have learned in writing these pages however, is that in order for me to write about my life in a way that isn’t whiny and sour, I need a certain amount of perspective. The humor is born from the pain not during, but after. Periodically, I’ll look back through these pages for something and stumble across a post where I didn’t give myself the appropriate emotional recovery time-frame. These are the posts whose subtext reads: GET THIS WOMAN SOME PROZAC.

So here I am, unsure if I have enough perspective, but trying to get something down anyway. I am well aware of the fact that I have gone far too long without posting anything, during a time when there is more going on than ever, and I am compounding my stress by feeling as though I am missing my opportunity to write about some of the really the good things – because even in my spiral towards total insanity, I can see that there are some good things. I know this because they are the reasons that we have not given up entirely and knocked on the door at B Street asking, “Can we just have our house back, please?”

As for our new house, well, if I have to hear myself tell one more person how much POTENTIAL it has, I am going to have to personally tell myself to shut the hell up. Blah, blah di freakin blah. It is this perpetual need to not seem ungrateful and unappreciative that has been so tough. Yes, we are fortunate enough to have two wonderful children that are trying to kill us , and a new house that looks like it was remodeled by a blind person , and yet all I want to do is tell people how insanely overwhelmed I am. This new house of ours? Yeah, it’s kind of like having 10 newborns all at the same time. And, if having children has been any lesson to me, I have learned that the same things that bring you the most joy and happiness in the world can also bring you the most hair-pulling, scream-into-your-pillow, sobbing-on-the-bathroom-floor frustration. So I guess you could say it’s kind of like that.

In between the regular, day-to-day shuffle of kids and house projects that don’t get done, we have been inserting side-trips here and there. Steve’s father turned 70, and we traveled to the booming metropolis of Redding to celebrate in the festivities. Additionally, the season of Eskra has officially been kicked off, beginning with separate bachelor and bachelorette parties in Lake Tahoe that killed not just a handful of brain cells, but entire sectors of our frontal cortex. I think it was the altitude. In all cases, it was nice to get away from here for just the briefest of moments and to alleviate the pounding need to accomplish something.

There are a set of photos that Steve took the day after our offer on this house was officially accepted. For those who have not already seen them, you can flip through to get an idea of where the crazy begins. I have taken only a small handful of photos over the last month. You’ll note that there are no rhyme or reason to the subject, or even the quality for that matter. But for those of you suffering withdrawal, it should get you over the hump.

Now, where’s that Prozac?