Continual State of Becoming

It's been in the high 90s and low 100s nearly everyday this summer. Which has made me slightly miserable. I'm not a huge fan of summer to begin with, so going through an even hotter summer is not fun at all. We finally have a break in the hot humid weather, which I'm happy about. Yesterday was a beautiful day, in the 70s for the most part. Today it's even cooler out. Dylan and I are both wearing pants with no sweating in sight. I should be really really excited. Except this is one of the rare days that I had outdoor plans, so I'm kinda bummed. But on this rainy, dreary day I figured I'd take a moment to jot down some of my random thoughts... First of all I think I need to admit that I have absolutely no ability to be spontaneous. In fact, the idea of not having every detail planned out way in advanced causes me to panic quite a bit. Today, for instance, I was ready to start calling my friends at like 7am to come up with a Plan B since it looked like o...

I was reading through some of my first blog entries last night when I came across this excerpt that made me chuckle (July 2005 I believe): I just got back from grocery shopping. Which is one of my least favorite things to do. But I'm convinced, especially now that it's summer break and there are more kids being dragged to the store with their mother, that grocery stores must produce some kind of painful ultra-high frequency that only kids can hear. And it must be so painful to have to listen to it that all a kid can do is scream. Not just cry... scream... at the top of their lungs... the entire time they are in the store. Those poor kids, why do parents force them to go through such torture. I read this after taking Dylan for a quick trip to Wegman's. He was so miserable I gave him a lollipop just to keep him quiet and happy for the 10 minutes we were there. If I had only remembered that the source of his discomfort was that high pitch frequency I would have given ...

I wrote a while ago that Dylan didn't like the library. In fact, he screamed whenever we spent more 5 minutes in one. I tried showing him how fun it was to get a stack of books and read them at the library, I also tried taking him to story time a few times, but that NEVER went well once he got old enough to know where he was. It took me a while (longer than I should admit to), but I finally remember something I heard in grad school about how boys typically like nonfiction books more than story books. So a couple weeks ago I tested the theory. I told Dylan we were going to the library to get truck books... he couldn't wait to go. It worked, we got there and he was so excited about getting some books about trucks, that he didn't seem to mind the fact that we were in the library at all. We went back yesterday and got some boat books... I think I hit the jackpot by finding one about aircraft carriers, planes and boats at the same time, work in a few trains and constructi...

I've made it up to the term "cadence" in my dictionary, which means I have conquered the B's! Wahoo! In an attempt to make this task seem more attainable, I've come up with a plan... I'm figuring that if I read 100 pages a month, I can finish in 8 more months. Which means that if I read 10 pages a day at the beginning of the month, I'll make enough of a dent after 10 days that if I feel a need to read something else, I can do it without feeling guilty. And then when the next month comes around, I'm all set to go back to the dictionary. I can do that, 10 pages a day for 10 days is hardly a challenge. Anyway, here are some of my thoughts as I made my way through the B's. One of the longest entries in the B's was for bibliography. I was a little surprised to even see it in there, let alone that it was 4 pages long (the entire continent of Africa had 7 pages). It was mostly just lists of important historical musical bibliographies. I'...

Dylan is potty training. We spent the whole weekend at home so that he'd have easy access to the potty, and he did surprisingly well. I say "surprisingly" only because I was fully dreading the whole experience, so the fact that I only had to clean up a few very small accidents was like a dream in comparison to the nightmare of clean ups I was mentally prepared for. I was in no way planning on potty training at this point. In fact I had decided that I would wait to potty train until Dylan was really ready. In my mind that moment would be when Dylan came up to me and said something along the lines of "mother dearest, I wish to use the toilet now." Well, he didn't quite phrase it that way, but he did tell us a few times that he needed to pee, and then he started asking for diaper changes pretty frequently. So I took that as our cue. He must have been really ready, because aside from a few incidents on day one, he's been mostly accident free. Piece o...

I've finished the A's! One letter down, 25 more to go :) I know I'm not even close to done, but at least I finished one letter, and it makes me feel like if I can do this much, surely I can do it 25 more times. No problem. Here are some last little A tidbits... it blurs into the B's too. -There are lots of instruments. LOTS. And I've noticed that a good amount of the non-western-classical music instruments have some kind of drone aspect to their instrument/music. Interesting... -There are lots of organ stops. LOTS AND LOTS. I have no idea how anyone can play the organ. Piano is challenging enough. But throw in multiple keyboards, tons of foot pedals, and a boatload of various stops, I can't even comprehend. Let alone, how on earth does someone get their doctorate in organ performance??? (in case Elaine ever reads this... I doubt it though) -One big problem I'm having is that there are times when I want a more tangible grasp on what I'm reading...

Lately I've been getting more and more into yoga. I started taking a weekly yoga class at the rec center in February and it didn't take long before I was hooked. It wasn't my first attempt at yoga, I'd taken several beginner classes a few years ago. And I also took prenatal yoga while I was pregnant. Both of those classes were great and I'm definitely glad I took them because the class I"m in now is not really geared towards beginners and I'm sure I'd be completely lost if I hadn't had some background. There are several reasons I love going to my yoga class 1- It's an hour and fifteen minutes each week in which I get to just focus on myself. I don't have anyone else to share my attention with... no family, no friends, just me alone. It's somewhat selfish, but at least it's a healthy selfish activity. I don't really even talk to people in my class all that much because I really just want to appreciate my alone time. And I...

This was an instrument similar to a cello at one point. Schubert wrote a sonata for it, but since the instrument is no longer around it's usually now played on the cello. I actually (successfully) accompanied a violist on this piece in college. Well I thought it was successful anyway. About 10 minutes before we played it in a recital one of the piano teachers listened to us go over it and told me I had completely interpreted it wrong. Then she showed me how I should have played it. Even though we played the same notes it sounded night and day different. She was probably right, but I still liked the way I was doing it, so I didn't change anything. Nothing quite like someone telling you how wrong you're doing something right before you're about to get up in front of all you peers. Oh well. I could never remember the name of the piece though, (Sonata in A minor by Schubert, D. 821-- not too catchy. but I think I remember Arpeggione Sonata) so I'm really exci...

Appoggiatura I learned a lot from this entry (not the least of which was the fact that an appoggiatura is not quite what I thought it was) #1- I always thought that my college piano teacher called grace notes "verschlags," and every time I tried to look it up, I could never find the definition. Clearly I was doing something wrong, which isn't surprising since ornaments confuse me to no end. But now I know that she was saying "VORschlag." Which makes a whole lot more sense. I've also learned that there's more "-schlags" out there. I initially assumed "schlag" meant note but I cheated and looked ahead... it means "beat," which also makes more sense especially since I know enough about German prepositions to know the following translations: -vorschlag: before the beat -anschlag: on the beat -zwischenschlag: with (another note on) the beat -nachschlag: after the beat #2- There's no clear right definition for an appoggia...

Lately I've been reading a lot. I tend to go through spurts when it comes to books. I'll read about a dozen books one month and then I won't read another book for 3 or 4 months. I also tend to read obsessively (but I am NOT a fast reader). If I can't finish a book in 3 days then I figure it's just not good enough to keep reading. This is because during the three day time period I will read every moment I can. And since I don't have much available reading time during the day anymore this usually means I stay up late, sacrificing precious sleep just to see what the next page brings. And then once I find that out I just HAVE to know what's on the next page after that... it's a never ending process that only stops when I realize that I'm SO tired I've read a paragraph three times and still have no idea what the words are. So my most recent reading spell is coming to a close. I don't really want to mention most of the books I read because ...

Last night my sister Sarah and her boyfriend joined us for dinner and a night of Pinochle. We have this type of get together every so often, just infrequently enough to make Matt have to reexplain the rules of Pinochle every time. But we had a good time last night. We also had good food :) I've made a recent attempt to refocus my creative energy from piano playing to cooking. Mostly this is due to the fact that it's har d for me to spend any amount of time at the piano. I'm hoping it's just a temporary hiatus and once Dylan is a little older I'll be able to get back into it. But in the meantime I decided that since I enjoy cooking, and it's something I have to do every night anyway, I may as well put a little more effort into it. I've been trying to challenge myself to use a brand new ingredient as well as a brand new recipe once a month. It's a pretty easy goal to accomplish, but it helps me push myself outside what I'm used ...

We have hit a few minor milestones lately with Dylan. First of all, he's talking up a storm. I think he's reached the 3 word sentence point now and I'm sure 4 and 5 words are just around the corner. His words still aren't that clear... motorcycle sounds more like moder-car, but he's getting there. Second, we took down the baby gates. He's fully capable of going up and down the stairs now on his own. He still has to hold on to something to keep from losing his balance, but I think he's smart enough to know not to go head first down the stairs. Plus he's pretty s familiar with his boundaries at our house, so there just didn't seem to be a point to the gates anymore. It's so strange to me that he no longer needs to be corralled. Third, he has peed on the potty a whopping 4 times! Always right before his bath (since the first thing he was doing in his bath was peeing anyway). It took me a few weeks just to get him to sit on the potty, and the...

After making a big deal of not wanting to use the word "hate" I did a search in my blog to see if I do use the word. I do. Here's how: I got 61 results, though a lot of those were for the word w hate ver. So that made me feel a little better. I took Dylan to the library, which Dylan HATES. Dylan's only doing one nap a day now, which I though I would hate, but I actually love. I'd just hate for them to have to walk through it. (Referring to my piano student and his father coming to the house on a day when our door was covered in beetles). I hate it when I'm wrong. I hate having to fight for a good spot. (at a general admission concert) I hate needles and doctor-related things. I used to hate gardening. I really hate that the rest of the world doesn't structure their information so it is library ready. (I think I wrote this while working at the NGA when I came across an artist who constantly used a different version of his name, yet I needed to make a...

So after adding 2 entries to my forgotten blog last night I went to bed still thinking about the whole swearing thing. I think I can get another post from it, so here we go. There's a blog that I check out from time to time called www.shitmykidsruined.com It has pictures of things that have been broken by people's children. The "Desi-twins" picture is absolutely worth seeing. It's very entertaining to see just how much havoc a small child is capable of wreaking. Every time I check it out I can't help but wonder what my future contribution to the blog will be. So far most of our damage consists of a few dings on the wall, some stains on our couch, and snack crumbs everywhere. But I'm sure our time for a catastrophe will come. Anyway, I was reading a review of this newish site in an online newspaper. Because of the swear word in the url/title of the blog they decided to refer to the blog as Stuff My Kids Ruined, but they did make note of the fact th...

Sometimes I feel as though I've always been a mom. I think this is mostly due to the fact that my life changed so drastically once Dylan was born that I tend to think of the person I was before Dylan as a completely different person or a completely different lifetime. Like that was the era of Just-Jessica, followed by a brief era of Jessica-and-Matt, and now I'm in the Mom-era of Jessica. And it's strange when I think of some of the things I did pre-Mom. Like I used to be able to eat a meal without a squirmy child on my lap... or that I ever went to grad school. I love being a stay-at-home-mom (SAHM). Before Dylan I would have never thought it possible, but I just couldn't imagine our lives any other way now. And even though I am taking care of a child and the household there is still a little bit of guilt over the fact that I went to grad school, specifically to get a degree that would help me get a career going, and then never used it. My poor MLS is just hidin...

Aside from email, I don't think I have written a complete sentence in a very long time. I write down to-do lists, grocery lists, directions to people's houses, dinner menus, and the ABC's (Dylan's learning his letters) on a very frequent basis. I even occasionally write things in Facebook: "cute pic" "haha, awesome" with some strange amount of "!!!!" or the smiley emoticon following it, but now you don't even have to do that, you can just click the "like" button... no spelling required. Even the sentences I write in an email are less than interesting, most of them revolve around scheduling play dates "we're free Mon, Wed, or Thurs morning... you?" But as far as intelligent written communication, nada. Even earlier today, I signed and anniversary card for matt, but all I wrote was "Happy Anniversary, Love Jessica." I can actually feel my ability to coherently and intelligently express myself dec...

2009 Year in Review Survey 1. What did you do in 2009 that you'd never done before? Started running! I ran a 5k, a 4mile, and a 10k race. But I also ran 8.5 miles on my own at one point. I wanted to get up to 10, but didn't make it once the weather got cold. I also made my first pie, and it was completely from scratch. Apple Cranberry Crumb Pie, delicious. 2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year? I don't usually make any, but this year I think I'm going to cut back on candy. 3. Did anyone close to you give birth? Yes, a couple of my friends from mom's group. 4. Did anyone close to you die? No. 5. What countries did you visit? Again, just the U.S. I haven't been out of the country in a very very long time. 6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009? After making pasta for Christmas dinner with a borrowed pasta maker, perhaps a pasta maker. 7. What date from 2009 will r...

Whenever I stumble over these types of things a part of me misses my old job at the NGA. http://www.nypost.com/seven/08242009/news/regionalnews/no__30g_arts_not_in_box___it_is_box_186203.htm

I completed my first 10k race! Matt and I both ran the Leesburg 10k yesterday and I think we did really well. I finished in 1 hr 21 minutes, which sadly put me in last place for my division, but I'm okay with that. Matt finished in 1 hr 8 minutes and did much better in his division. Not bad since I've only been running since May, and matt only started running a few weeks ago (though he did run through college). Despite the really hot weather, it was a nice run. Most of it was in the shade, and we ran right by our house, so the route was really familiar. I feel very proud of myself for having accomplished something that a year ago I never thought would be possible. It's making me strongly consider running an half marathon next spring, I think a marathon is still a little beyond my grasp at this point, I'm not sure I'd be able to dedicate enough time for training to accomplish that. But I think a half marathon is do-able. We'll see though. Upcoming race...

A while ago I wrote about a typical day for me and Dylan. I thought I'd do that again since he's changed so much since then. We usually wake up between 6:00 and 6:30. It takes me a couple minutes to accept that he is in fact awake for good (every morning I pray that he'll go back to sleep for an hour but he never does). After a quick diaper change we go downstairs and I prepare a cup of milk for him. Dylan looooves his milk in the morning, we'll go into the living room and watch some Disney cartoons, Handy Manny is his current favorite, while he drinks his milk in his own personal chair. Sometimes though he'll cuddle up with me on the couch while he drinks his milk. After he finishes his milk he'll play with his toys and crawl around for a little while. Usually around 7:30 his about ready for breakfast which typically consists of yogurt and a banana or banana bread or Kix. From time to time I switch it up by making pancakes, and sometimes Dylan will have...