My crazy monsters.

It's amazing the level of humiliation one is willing to take on when hanging out with a three year old (just running into our neighbors while we all don monster hats). Mostly though, it's just fun to follow their lead and act like a kid with my kids.  

One of Everett's favorite books, which he has memorized, is Monster Party, so one day he said, "Let's be monsters for school!" Throughout the week, we made monster hats, monster snacks, pet monsters, monster slime, read a lot of monster books, and had a monster party of our very own. 

Everett and I decided that the best children's books out there as a collection have got to be monster books. There are so many good ones. Every time I plan a topic for "school," I research books, and then check out an obscene amount from the library. Matt makes fun of me for it, and even this time, the librarian made fun of me for how many monster books I had reserved. Some books we check out are good, and some are really not, so I keep lists on here of the ones that Everett and Cambria have enjoyed. We read the good ones over and over until we have to take them back. As a collection, the monster books are the ones we have enjoyed the most. Something about a silly make believe topic like monsters encourages writers to be creative and funny in ways that are enjoyable for both kids and adults.  

Books we enjoyed:

• Monster Party
• Go Away Big Green Monster!
• Monster Munch
• Monsters Love Colors
• Monster Baby
• There's a Monster at the End of this Book
• Another Monster at the End of this Book
• Your Pal Mo Willems Presents Leonardo the Terrible Monster
• I Want a Monster!
• My Monster Mama Loves Me So
• There's a Monster in Your Book
• The Monster Next Door
• Jeremy Draws a Monster
• The Monster Returns
• Yuck! That's Not a Monster
• Mrs. Muffly's Monster
• Monster Day at Work
• Quit Calling me a Monster!
• Marilyn's Monster
• I Will Chomp You!

***

First, we read Monster Party, and we talked about what we wanted to eat at the party. Everett chose cheeseburgers, so we added them to our grocery list. 

Then, we had to make our monster masks for the party. We read Go Away Big Green Monster! and Monster Munch, which are both about shapes, and we discussed what shapes he wanted on the monster masks. Then, we read Monsters Love Colors, and we discussed what colors Everett wanted to use for the masks. Everett loves to cut paper, so he chose colors and cut a lot of paper to make our monster hats. We were going for cute, not scary monsters, but the masks Everett made for Cambria and him are kind of terrifying, although I pretended they weren't. I made a monster hat for myself as an example. Everett was in charge of masks for himself, Cambria, Daddy, and our dog, Aspen. He did almost all of the cutting himself, designed what he wanted them to look like, and I helped with the gluing. It took a couple of days to make all the masks. 

We made mud and worms for monster snacks. Everett smashed oreos, mixed it with pudding to create the mud, and then added gummy worms. 

Once we had everything ready, we were ready to put on our masks and have our monster party. Cambria was so excited to wear the "hat" that Everett made for her.

On another day, Everett and Cambria made monster pets. We read I Want a Monster! about a girl who gets a pet monster. Then, we read Jeremy Draws a Monster and the sequel, The Monster Returns, and Everett and Cambria drew their pet monsters.

Everett decided to draw a monster on each side of the paper to make his a two-headed monster. Then, he told me a story about it, and I wrote it down for him.

Cambria was proud of her monster, too.

Finally, we made green monster slime for "science," following this recipe.

Body image and cuss words and running through the sprinklers.

Matt was home sick in bed for a few days, and on one of those days, when he groggily woke up at noon, I was outside running through the sprinklers with the kids. He noticed and brought the camera out to take pictures of us. My gut reaction was to tell him, You can put the camera back inside. I don’t need documentation of me in a bathing suit. Obviously, I am someone who enjoys taking photographs of times I want to remember, snapshots of joyful moments in life. This was definitely a memory I wanted to keep, and yet, all I could think about in the moment was how I looked in a bathing suit. 

Sometimes it just feels good to journal using the word fuck. You've been warned.

We sacrifice a lot as mothers, but the one thing that is currently staring me in the face is the sacrifice of one’s body. As a mother, your stomach will stretch and grow beyond what seems humanly possible, your breasts will grow bigger than you ever imagined and will actually keep a human alive for the first six months of their life, and then they will never be the same. Your hair will fall out after you have a baby, and you will think, okay, I get why other parts of my body must be sacrificed, but my hair? What is the biological purpose here? Just to make sure I feel humble? Your brain will be a bit cloudy for awhile or forever (still to be determined). This is not even including the actual aftermath of the process of birth, which is like coming off of a battlefield victorious, but wounded.

Last June, almost a year ago, when I was in the fog of postpartum depression, Matt took me to Palm Springs for our anniversary in an attempt to try to support me. I put on a bikini and looked in the mirror, and I remember thinking, wow, I look good, and then, that is so fucked up, because I am too skinny. I had subconsciously stopped eating the way I should for someone who is mothering and breastfeeding and consuming food and actually enjoying life.

But, some part of my subconscious that society has instilled within me said:
Yes, you are too skinny, and you look good. 
You are sickly skinny, 
and you look good. 

Now, my body feels healthy and happy and fuller.

I try to eat healthy, enjoy food, enjoy a cocktail, enjoy an IPA, enjoy exercising, and enjoy being active with my kids. 

More importantly, my spirit is healthy and happy and fuller. 

My body carried two babies and birthed them, and my stomach will probably never be flat or toned. As I work out, I feel my back, butt, legs, and arms getting stronger and more muscular, but my stomach is still squishy. Yet, I am so happy with the journey my stomach has gone on to get me to this point in life.

Why is it within me to look at photos of myself in a bathing suit and think, hmmm, should I start counting calories, should I work out more, should I start doing one hundred sit ups every day, should I…

I am fucking running through the sprinklers in the backyard with my kids. That is fucking beautiful and so am I.
So is my body.
So are all of our bodies. 

So here are the pictures of this beautiful moment.
May my daughter and son somehow grow up in a culture where squishy stomachs that have a backstory are celebrated. 

***

Disclaimer: I posted the pictures that are more flattering than others. I cringe at myself that I even feel the need to filter through them, but I do; my self image is still a work in progress. So, these are the best angles of me fucking frolicking through the sprinklers in a bathing suit with my kids. 

Everett the octopus and Cambria the jellyfish.

I do plan to send Everett to public school for kindergarten, but if there is one thing that makes me want to homeschool in early elementary, it is the field trips. I love seeing my kids learning and having fun through experiences, and in San Diego, it feels like there are endless possibilities. Also, it is so much more enjoyable to explore a place on a slow, quiet weekday than a busy weekend full of crowds. 

These lessons were inspired by a trip to the Birch Aquarium back in November, where Everett decided that his favorite underwater animal was seahorses, because the boys have the babies.

During our study of underwater animals, we were able to take another trip to the Birch Aquarium and two field trips to Sea World. We saw a mother octopus guarding her eggs, a baby beluga nursing, and a baby shark moving around in its egg. There was so much beauty in seeing life develop before our very eyes, and that just can't compare to what we can learn from books or inside the walls of a classroom, although we tried to make our learning at home fun, too. 

Books we enjoyed about underwater:

• Octopus Alone
• An Octopus is Amazing
• Good Thing You're Not an Octopus (not really about an octopus, but the kids liked it)
• Peanut Butter and Jellyfish
• Way Down in the Deep Blue Sea
• The Great Shark Escape (chapter book)
• Nugget and Fang
• Shark Lady (love a book showing a strong female scientist)
• National Geographic: First Big Book of the Ocean
• The Magic School Bus Takes a Dive
• The Magic School Bus on the Ocean Floor
• How to Spy on a Shark
• Over in the Ocean
• Secret Seahorse
• Papa Seahorse's Search
• Mister Seahorse
• Commotion in the Ocean
• Pout Pout Fish 
• Rainbow Fish

Underwater dress up and story telling:

We read books about octopuses, jellyfish, and other underwater creatures. Everett was an octopus and Cambria was a jellyfish, and Everett wrote a story about their adventures.

Everett the octopus:

Cambria the jellyfish:

Underwater game:

We made up a game called Eel Attack, after learning that eels can attack octopuses, and if they succeed and bite off a tentacle, the octopus can regrow it. One of us was an octopus trying to escape. The other was the eels (balloons) trying to get the octopus. It was just an excuse to run around and hit each other with balloons while yelling, "EEL ATTACK!"

Sea horse art and hide and seek:

Everett and Cambria made sea horses based on the art in Eric Carle's Mister Seahorse. The idea was to use a clothespin and a cotton ball as a sponge, then q-tips to create dots. Cambria loved sponging the paint, and Everett didn't want to. He wanted to use q-tips, and Cambria didn't want to, so they did what they wanted, and they were both really proud of their final products. Then, we read Papa's Seahorse Search and Secret Seahorse, which are both about finding hidden seahorses, so we played hide and seek with our seahorses. We took turns hiding and finding them around the house. 

Field trips to Sea World:

Watching the baby Beluga nursing was kind of a spiritual moment for me:

Field trip to the Birch Aquarium:

Little firefighters.

We are always on the look out for inexpensive and/ or free activities to do around town. In San Diego, the possibilities feel endless, for which I am so grateful. This was a fun find: the San Diego Firehouse Museum in Little Italy. My ticket was three dollars, and both kids were free. It's an old firehouse, so it's a small museum, but both kids loved it.

We started our day by reading lots of firefighter books we checked out from the library, and these were the ones we enjoyed:

• Fireman Small
• Elliot's Firetruck
• At the Firehouse
• Spark the Firefighter
• The Little Fire Engine
• A Firetruck Named Red
• New York's Bravest
• Fireman Small: Fire Down Below!
• The Little Firetruck (This firetruck is driven by Jill. I am always trying to find books with females.)
• Spot Goes to the Fire Station (about a grandpa, so Everett loved it, even though it's for littler kids)
• Maisy's Fire Engine 
• A Fire Engine for Ruthie

The day after the museum visit, we read books again, built a city, and played firefighter.