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More Coffee Mama is on hiatus while I focus on my blog about the writing life.  Please come follow me at Crow River Writer. 

I promise I will still tell funny stories about motherhood, inappropriate but funny things my kids say, and birthday cakes.

The Birthday Celebration Begins

Toad has been planning his birthday since... let's see... the day after his birthday last year.

Today we started a week of celebrating with a small family gathering for lunch.  The menu included lasagna (or visagna, as Birdy calls it), salad, garlic bread, root beer floats, and some very interesting cupcakes.

Note to self: do not try a new recipe for a birthday celebration.

I have a fantastic cupcake cookbook called Crazy About Cupcakes by Krystina Castella.  I love to page through it for inspiration and have put many of her tips to good use.  Most of the recipes I've tried have been delicious.

Today's was just weird.

Toad wanted Peanut Butter Cup Cupcakes so I tweaked the Low-Fat Chocolate Cupcake recipe that we love, threw in some Reese's Peanut Butter Chips, and then made the Peanut Butter Frosting.

Several things contributed to the downfall of these cupcakes.  Number one, I didn't have appropriate cupcake liners -- Toad probably would not appreciate Abby Cadabby cupcake liners.  I decided to use my Pampered Chef stoneware muffin pan.  Mistakes #1 and #2.

Mistake #3 -- I didn't have enough brown sugar to make the complete frosting recipe, so I cut the recipe in half.  In theory, it should have worked out just fine but I'm thinking -- no.  The recipe required the hot frosting to be spread on hot cupcakes.  I removed the cupcakes from the pan, still hot, at which point they started to collapse.  No cupcake liners, right?  The frosting, when cooled, congealed rather quickly and looked like cat vomit.  Mistakes #4 and #5. 

When the cupcakes cooled enough, I decorated each with grated chocolate chips and an upside down mini Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, a candle, and a Happy Birthday pick.  Hammer Guy rather enthusiastically agreed with me when I said they didn't turn out so great.  His enthusiasm was extensive, in my opinion.  I piled the lumps on a tiered tray and hoped for the best.    They weren't your typical light, fluffy cupcake, that's for sure.  One of my sisters raved about them, though. 

Because I got involved in a work situation, poor Toad had to wait and wait and wait to open his presents, but it was worth the wait!  Some highlights include Lego Harry Potter Hagrid's Hut, Lego Pirates of the Caribbean for Wii, supplies and a breadmaking cookbook (apparently requiring the use of a bread machine that we got for our wedding), super soakers for at the pool this summer, a few t-shirts and comfy pants, and money from Grandma B.

Tomorrow the celebration continues as Toad and Hammer Guy go to Target Field for Toad's first Twins game.  Next Thursday is his actual birthday, which will more than likely mean dinner at Space Aliens.  Next Saturday is his friend party, with a Phineas and Ferb Backyard Beach theme.  Guess I need to get my act together for that one.  Hopefully his cake turns out better than the cupcakes!

A Funny Thing Happened After I Turned Off the TV

It's Thursday and I still haven't gotten caught up on my shows from last week. 

Turn Off the TV Week (or Screen-Free Week) was a success for the most part.  Hammer Guy and I cheated a couple of times by watching the news.  Toad rocked it, though!  My mom watched him one afternoon when I had to go back into the office, and because she can't miss the 6 o'clock news, he was exposed to it.  I told him that didn't count, because would he have intentionally watched the news?  No way, he said.

Several of the kids in his class made it Monday through Thursday without any screen time, but once the holiday weekend rolled around (no school on Friday), all bets were off.  My kid, though, stuck to it.  He was the only kid in his classroom to go all seven days without screen time!  He earned free cookie dough and a coupon from Papa Murphy's and a free pizza from Dominos.  Yay for pizza!  This week, though, he's been thrilled with the fact that I've let him watch TV after he's done with his homework in the afternoons.

I was really looking forward to plopping myself down on the couch again - I was even going to cheat on Sunday night and watch Upstairs, Downstairs, but I've been so busy either reading or working for the Day Job or working on my writing that I just haven't watched TV.  And that's weird.

That's all going to change in about two minutes when I go park myself in front of the news.

And, oh yes, there's a Royal Wedding on tomorrow and, true to tradition, I'm going to get up to watch it.  It's only about 45 minutes before I usually get up, so what's the difference?

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Screen-Free Week 2011

Last year was the first year the whole family participated in Screen-Free Week, also known as Turn Off the TV Week.  Toad can earn prizes at school for each day that he does not watch TV, play video games, or use the computer.  As we did last year, Birdy, Hammer Guy, and I are also participating.

This is Day Two, and so far so good, with a couple of exceptions:

• Birdy was home sick from school yesterday and she and Hammer Guy, who was also under the weather, rested in front of a movie.  
• Toad had some photos taken over the weekend and I showed him the slideshow.  
• Since HG and I are required to use computers for work, I do not consider time spent on the computer -- at least for us -- screen time.  I will not give up writing for Screen-Free Week; the computer and internet are my main tools for that part of my career.

Yesterday when Toad came home from school, he and Birdy played a ton of board games and Critters and read together.  Toad and I played a couple of cutthroat games of Go to the Dump (our version of Go Fish) before bed.  Today Toad got out his Star Wars Legos and played in the living room for two-and-a-half hours.  Birdy was so exhausted from her first day back at school (and she still isn't feeling 100%) so she was in bed by 6:30!  Tonight the boys are at Cub Scouts and I'm enjoying the quiet of the house to do some writing.

Turning off the TV is harder on the parents at our house than it is on the kids.  A house rule is that the kids don't watch TV on school nights, a rule that's been in place since Toad was in preschool.  Every now and then, we break that rule, especially on days after school that Toad is so bored and, since I work from home every afternoon, I am unable to satisfactorily keep him entertained.  Hammer Guy and I like to watch TV after the kids go to bed, so this week we'll be missing a few of our favorite shows.

I think it's important to limit screen time and monitor what kids are watching, what websites they are visiting, but I also think that you shouldn't go overboard.  Sure, Toad sees a lot of commercials for crap now that he's moved beyond PBS and Sprout, and yes, he tells me how cool everything is and how he wants this and he wants that, but obviously we're not going to buy him every single thing he sees and he gets that.  He gets excited about new episodes of his favorite shows, but he also gets excited about new books.  For months before its release, he told me how he couldn't wait for the new Diary of a Wimpy Kid book.  Birdy doesn't watch as much TV as Toad does, and many times when we put in a movie for her, she gets bored before the end, but she has her favorites, too.

I think about my favorite TV shows from when I was a kid and I know that I benefited from watching them -- Electric Company, Sesame Street, and Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood from my early days, the Brady Bunch, Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, Eight is Enough, and the Love Boat when I was older.  I remember sneaking Dallas and Falcon Crest when I would stay overnight at my sister's house.

As with most things in life, it's important to have balance.  We're turning off the TV this week, and maybe next week we won't watch quite as much as we did before.  Maybe we will.  We don't need a special week to remind us that we can do other things.  We play board games, ride bikes, go for walks, play Legos, color, read, read, read.  And every Friday night, we have a family movie night. And that's okay for us.

Dreams

My friend Maris, a fantastic photographer, loving mother, and amazing person in general, recently wrote on her blog about childhood dreams, punctuated by photos of her mad scientist son.  This, along with some conversations I've had with Toad and my own struggle with finding balance between motherhood, my "day job," and my writing, has compelled me to think about the subject quite a bit these last few days.

Tuesday I asked Toad what he wants to be when he grows up.  For a couple of years now, he has aspired to be a Lego Set Designer and I periodically check with him to see if that is still his goal.  This week, in addition to his Lego aspirations, he told me that he would also like to be a cartoonist.  He has enjoyed graphic novels (especially Star Wars) for a couple of years now, but in the last year he's become more and more interested in the Sunday comics, Garfield, and books like Wimpy Kid and Big Nate.

When I hear that Toad wants to do something creative, my heart soars.  I start thinking about how Hammer Guy and I can encourage him.  I ask myself if we're doing enough.  He's got more Legos than any other kid on the planet.  He has a plethora of art supplies and "How to Draw" books.  But is it enough?  I'm a writer, Hammer Guy is a brilliant artist -- did he get the right genes?  (If he got my artistic ability, he's doomed.)

What about school?  Is it enough that he only has art class every six days?  What kind of art program does the high school have?  Should we be thinking about the Arts high school?  What about college?  What kind of degree do you need to design Legos?  Am I crazy to be thinking about this when he's only in the second grade?

Here's why it's so important to me right now:  when I was a kid, I didn't say, "Oh, I want to go into retail management!" or "I want to hire people and manage employee performance!"

Don't get me wrong.  I love my job.  My work is important to me.  I take a lot of pride in what I do and I get a lot in return.  I loved working retail all those years, as sick as that sounds.  And I learned a tremendous amount at both Best Buy and Babies and wouldn't be the person I am today without those experiences.

But when will I get a chance to live out my childhood dream of being an "author?"  My parents encouraged me, sent me to writing workshops, worked with the school district to make sure there were opportunities outside of regular curriculum, like writers- and artists-in-residence.  I wrote like crazy as soon as I could hold a pencil and all through high school.  I got an English degree and avoided becoming a teacher at all costs.  I didn't want to teach, I wanted to write.  At some point, though, after college ended and the real world began, making a living and a career became -- well, necessary.

My kids are still little.  They still have the beautiful, hopeful attitude that they can grow up to be anything they wish.  Toad frequently asks if I've gotten my book published yet.  No kiddo, not yet, but I will.  Someday we'll see it at Barnes and Noble.  I will prove to my children that childhood dreams do come true, even if they don't come true until long after your childhood.

By the way, if you're wondering what Birdy would like to be when she grows up, she will tell you, "Still Birdy."  So lovely.

(Here's a favorite song from my childhood: When We Grow Up by Roberta Flack and Michael Jackson, from the Free to Be You and Me record.)

Thirty-Seven

One thing that I have not talked about much on this blog is my third career -- after parenting and the M-F day job.  My career as a writer.

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be a writer.  It's amazing to me how Toad, who is in second grade, is like me at that age.  He's copying books into a notebook -- right now it's Diary of a Wimpy Kid - The Ugly Truth.  I did something very similar when I was his age, only it was writing "books" very similar to whatever I was reading at the time.  B is for Betsy by Carolyn Haywood.  Betsy-Tacy by Maud Hart Lovelace.

In third grade, our first Writer-in-Residence visited my elementary school.  I will never forgot those writers -- Patricia Weaver Francisco, Michael Dennis Browne, Richard Solly.  I was published for the first time when I was twelve.  I wrote a narrative poem called "Tigers Were My Friends" and it was published in the annual COMPAS Writers-in-the-School anthology.

I was on my way to being a writer.

I went to camps and workshops and wrote constantly all through junior high and high school.  I was co-editor of my high school newspaper.  I wrote -- rather briefly -- an editorial column for the UMD Statesman.  I worked as a writing tutor for three years.  There was no question what I wanted to be when I grew up.  I never even considered any other career.

Other careers considered me, however.  No one came beating down my door after graduation to offer me a job writing novels.  That's not how it works.  My first job out of college was writing travel proposals for an incentive marketing firm.  Then I fell in love with my part-time job at Best Buy and made it my full-time job, which became a total time-suck and left little time for writing (although I did find the time to meet the love of my life, Hammer Guy, at Best Buy 281).  In 1999, four years after I graduated from college, I decided to go back to school for my Masters of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing.  Four years later, I had a thesis of short stories and a brand new baby, and if I thought it was hard to find time to write with a full-time job, I was in for a very rude awakening as a parent.

It's been 11 years since I decided to go back to school and become the writer I always wanted to be.  I was published in 1999 and 2000.  I didn't submit my work again until 2006, when I was published in a small literary magazine out of Massachusetts.  That was the same year I tried writing for young adults and found it to be a natural fit.  I haven't been actively submitting any short stories since then, thanks in part to the addition of another baby in 2007.

Last year in November I decided to do something crazy.  I had a broken foot and wasn't getting around much.  I heard about this thing called National Novel Writing Month.  Every November, people around the world start a novel on November 1st and are challenged to finish it -- with a beginning, middle, and end -- with at least 50,000 words by November 30th.  Thirty days of wild literary abandon.  It doesn't have to be fantastic.  It just has to be finished.  I thought, why not.

It was one of the best experiences of my writing career.  It forced me to write.  It forced me to be disciplined and meet a daily word count goal.  The prose was sloppy and wordy and all-around crappy, but I pushed myself and I finished in 25 days -- a young adult novel titled, at the time, Look How They Shine.  The months following were dedicated to revising that beast.  A handful of trusted readers offered critiques.  In June the novel, then titled Shine, was polished and possibly ready for an agent.  I began to query agents, who, by the way, take a lot of time off in the summer.

The rejections started coming.  Rejections are good, you know, because it means that you can move forward, that you are one step closer to finding the right agent to represent you and your work.  I kept two queries out at a time, and when one rejection came in, I would send it to another.

As of last week, I'd been rejected six times for what is now titled Cloud 9.  I was still waiting to hear from the seventh agent, and if I got a no from that one, I was planning to submit the manuscript to a contest from a publishing house.

Back to high school for a minute.  The summer before my senior year I spent a week at my last COMPAS summer writing workshop.  There I met a Minnesota author named Sandra Benitez.  She is an amazing writer, an amazing woman, an incredible storyteller.  She told us that she had not started writing until she was thirty-seven years old.  Thirty-seven!  I was seventeen and I thought to myself, I would die if I couldn't write.  How could she wait until she was thirty-seven to become a writer?  I was young and certain that I had a brilliant career as a writer ahead of me -- and I wasn't going to wait until I was thirty-seven to make it happen.

This past March, I turned thirty-seven.

I am still certain that I have a brilliant career as a writer ahead of me.

Friday I received an email from my seventh queried agent:  "Hi Sara, I enjoyed your query.  Can you send me the full manuscript?"

An agent requested a full.  An agent request MY full.

It is a tiny step toward publication.  I have worked hard on my novel.  I care about my characters and what happens to them and I want the world to know them, too.  Maybe this agent won't be able to put the manuscript down and call next week offering representation.  Maybe she won't.  Maybe I'll get a politely worded rejection.  That's okay -- I'll just start the process again.

I know that it will happen someday.  If I'm thirty-seven, thirty-eight, forty-eight, it doesn't matter. 

What matters is that I keep writing.