Boston.com Featured Parent Blogger!

Me! Yep me!  The Boston.com Featured Parent Blogger of the week.

Honest to goodness I was getting ready to throw in the bloggy towel last week. It’s a lot of work for not much return. I was mulling it over, getting ready to ask my bloggy BFFs what they thought. Maybe I just needed a change of scene. Perhaps I should just head on over to Youtube full time. Maybe.

Sigh. I’ve been here before.

Then… tweet! chirp! ding! (or whatever noise my twitter direct message makes.) It’s Boston_moms asking if I would like to be their Featured Parent Blogger next week?

Would I? Yes I would!
So I have a little spring in my step. Being on Boston.com is fun :-) Maybe this blogging thing isn’t so bad afterall.

Want to check it out?

Boston.com screenshot

From the Boston.com Lifestyle page

You can find the forums here!

Go check it out and comment or ask questions. I’d love to hear from you!

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Sooooooo busy

I’ve been busy lately, which is why I haven’t been here. I’ve been on Facebook and Youtube, but I’ve been neglecting this space.

I’m sooooooooo busy. Don’t you just HATE it when people say that? As if you’re not? As if they are somehow busier than you? When they haven’t even taken the time to ask you what you’ve been up to because they’re sooooooooo busy talking about themselves. How do they even know?

Besides, when did busy become a virtue? When did it become a measure of success? When did busy mean I’m better than you?

What are you busy doing?

I have three kids. They all have different needs, different schedules. There is a white board that still says MAY. I swear to god. I haven’t updated it since MAY. I’m too busy. So I moved it to the cloud. The phone dings every hour to remind me there is something I need to do.

My 2 year old has a food allergy that causes me stress every time he’s out of my sight at preschool. Even though I know they take steps to ensure his safety. My 7yo has just been diagnosed with ADHD which at first settled my frayed nerves about him, but then created a whole new worry. My 5yo has a nervous tick in her face that at this point I can only assume is a direct relation to my own frazzled presence in her life.

Today I am off to the eye doctor. I have a stye or something in my left eye. This morning at the grocery store my vision blurred to the point that my heart started to race. I wondered if I was going to have a stroke right there in front of my 3yo at the checkout.

What am I busy doing?

Here’s the thing. I am not a single mom working 3 jobs to ensure that my kids have the basics that they need. From the outside looking in I am a suburban housewife. I live in a wealthy town. My husband makes a good living. My children are healthy, and happy. My children are happy.

But I feel like they could be happier. Prior to a few weeks ago and specifically today I thought that meant keeping them and me busy. Busy work.

So I have been busy taking steps to be less busy. Weird I know. So to be clear, in my time away from these pages on the blog my busy has also meant that I’m not busy. It means that I’m spending time with my kids.

I used to brag about how busy I was that I couldn’t even read a book. It’s important to read to your kids, but it’s also important for them to see YOU read. That’s how you raise readers.

It means that I’m cooking Sunday dinner instead of running a errands or trying to fit in one last sports camp.

It means instead of plopping them in front of the TV to watch a movie, I plop them at a park and let them be kids.

I’m trying to change the meaning of busy in my house. It starts with me. I don’t want my kids childhood to be a blur to them or to me.

Last night instead of rushing my daughter into bed so I could get downstairs to finish cleaning the kitchen and then jump on the computer to organize just one more thing, I brushed her hair.

I can’t even remember the last time that I brushed her hair just to brush it. I didn’t pull it tight to quickly get through the snarls while she cringed. There wasn’t a place we needed to be to get it into a quick pony so she could be off to school or soccer or gymnastics.

The lights were low. The little fan on her dresser was humming. She sat on her little pink stool and I sat behind her on the floor. I just brushed her beautiful brown hair. We talked for 5 minutes while I smoothed it down with my hands. Brush, brush, brush. “Thanks mama. It looks beautiful.” and she gave me a kiss. It was a little slice of heaven on earth.
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ViolaCay’s Vlogging Video Voyage

Too much? Ok. I’ll try to think of a better title before this posts.(Not really).

This is the start of something new-ish for me. I have always loved video and it was a big part of my prior professional life. No not those kind of videos you perv. I made development videos for nonprofits and then later video birth announcements and Holiday cards.

I have tons of footage of my kids and family and I don’t mind being on camera. Sometimes I like it more than writing. And sometimes I can say it a bit better than I could write it.

So I fancied up my Youtube channel and made a trailer for it. I hope you like it and I hope that you’ll subscribe and travel with me on this vlogging video trip.

See you ’round the internets…

 

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Wish I was here.

And I mean here on the blog.

And also, HERE…

Toes in Water

Be back soon.

xo
vc

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40 is the new…something

I’ve had a hard time with this week’s NaBloPoMo prompts. The August theme is hot and  this week is all about what is “Hot”.

What makes a person hot? Is hotness fleeting? Would you want to be known as hot?

I have to tell you  that I was so confused by all the hotness. Because I am of a certain age I am closer to hot flashes than flashes of hot.

I am so far from thinking things in my daily life are hot that I had no idea what to write about. I have three children under 7. My life is a series of meals and driving to and fro there’s not much time to think “That’s hot!” ( please think Paris Hilton when you say that).

Gina Lollabrigida declared 40 as hot. And so did my friend’s Aunt. They BOTH said so, so it must be true. “A woman at 20 is like ice, at 30 she is warm and at 40 she is hot,” What I do know about my 40’s hotness aside is that I am more of who I always thought I would be than at any other age. I don’t really care what people think of me for the most part and I’ve always thought that was a hot quality.

What I know to be true is that ALL of my friends look hotter than they ever have. And I am talking about the ones I have know for 35 years. Truthfully, we all look better than we ever did. Also, we are far more interesting, having LIVED through some STUFF. We have advanced degrees, travelled around the world, given birth, are raising children, have careers, weathered storms, ran marathons. STUFF! We are multi faceted, layered, smart, confident, and I guess I mean this, HOT.

I’m not sure sure that 40 is the new anything. I think that 40 simply is hot all the way around. Bring on the flashes baby!

40isHot

I’ve joined NaBloPoMo this month. NaBloPoMo is a daily blogging exercise centered around a theme. For August 2013, it’s HOT. The daily writing prompts can be found here.

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I’m in charge of the warm.

When my husband and I first started living together we had some growing pains like every couple. We had a problem that seemed small, but if it wasn’t fixed I feared it would doom us.

I really like to be warm, and he didn’t mind so much being cold. I minded very much being cold.

Very Much.

I have no idea why someone who hates the cold so much was born in Boston. Why that same person stayed here after being raised in this arctic tundra. And why after traveling the world following the sun that same person decided to settle here. It’s COLD from October until April. Ok that might be an exaggeration. It’s not like that every year, but that’s how it felt this year anyway.

I digress. For the first year of our marriage there were lots of discussions about the temperature – the thermostat wars. In order to keep the peace we solved this problem simply.

I don’t mind too terribly being hot but despise being cold. He can’t sleep AT ALL when it’s hot and doesn’t mind being cold. So I proposed that he be in charge of the cooling and I would be in charge of the heating. No questions asked. No passive aggressive “isn’t it too hot/cold in here” business. Nope. In the winter I’m in charge of the thermostat and in the summer it’s all his. I’m in charge of a lot of things in my house. The kids, the food, the cleaning. You know, everything. And also, I’m in charge of the warm :-)

These days it’s even easier because this little brilliant piece of engineering, the Nest, has gotten to know us so well that sometimes we don’t even need to touch it for days! It knows when we’re away. We can control it from our phones. Awesome. Our 130 year old house has no idea what hit it.

 

Nest Thermostat

 

Now if I could only get him to be in charge of his dirty socks, that, would be great. Maybe there’s an app for that. A girl can dream.

How do you keep from having the thermostat wars?

 

 

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I’ve joined NaBloPoMo this month. NaBloPoMo is a daily blogging exercise centered around a theme. For August 2013, it’s HOT. The daily writing prompts can be found here.
How do you like to warm up when you’re cold?

Also that’s an Amazon affiliate link up there :-)

 

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