Explaining Love

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / 1 Comment

Noah is at the age now where he is starting to really care about other people.  He has always been a kind and gentle soul, but I have seen it develop and morph.  He has a “girlfriend”–I know he is totally too young but it is the absolute cutest thing in the world.  We were driving to school yesterday and I brought up love.  He said he didn’t love Sophie.  So we talked about love and how there are different kinds of love–even though our inadequate language only has one word for it.  I explained that there is the love you have for your family and that is the strongest and most important love and that most other love will not come close to rivaling the love one has for their family.  And Noah talked about how much he loved me, his dad and his sister.  And we talked about how much his grandparents loved him and his uncles, etc.

I then said we also come to love many of our friends, but that it’s a bit of a different kind of love.  But that when we love our friends we really look out for them and would be really really sad if something bad every happened to them and we would want to protect them.  He was so cute–he said “like one time when Sophie was hanging upside down on the climber and not holding on with any hands and it made me a little scared because she could fall.”  I said “yeah.”

“I love Sophie, mom.  She loves me too.”

They keep each other warm.  They hold hands at school and help each other get their coats on, etc.  The school has drawn the line at them being bathroom buddies.  They petition us for a sleep over.  They have been inseparable since the first day they met in Aug 2009.  The innocence of “love.”

One Step Closer

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / Leave a comment

Yesterday was the culmination of my doctoral study.  I had to orally defend my comprehensive exams.  For those of you who are wondering what comps are, they are pure hell.  That is what they are.  Not really, but I imagine they are close.  I had a committee of 3 professors and they each gave me question to answer and I had 2 weeks to answer.  The questions cover the entire work of research and content that I have studied as part of my doctoral program (which included information from my Master’s as well).  I read 70+ articles and 15+ books over the 6 week period to answer the questions in 15-20 page papers.  It was intense.  Then I waited two weeks and then I had to defend my answers.

It’s surreal.  It’s a great intellectual conversation but they challenge and question what you wrote, included and didn’t include.  It was certainly an intense 90 minutes, but I did well and PASSED.  This means I get to continue on and finish my PhD program.  If you don’t pass your comps–you get a chance to revise–you are not allowed to go on to work on your dissertation.  I’m happy to have this part done.  I am not almost officially ABD (All but dissertation).  There is a large group (80%) of folks who never get their dissertations finished.  I will not be that person.  I am certainly going to finish.  I have one more semester of course work–one of which is to write my dissertation proposal. The end is near.  I am glad that I will be done soon and have my PhD, but it’s a ton of work and I don’t know how I’d do it if my kids were older.  It requires so much time and now it’s a bit easier because they don’t have games and practices, etc.  But soon they will and I’ll be happy that school is over.

But for right now, I am going to enjoy my moment of celebration of passing the first hurdle.  Yay.  Now I just have to publish a few articles and present at a conference or two.  Then I’ll be ready to take academia by storm.

Totally Can’t Even Fake Curse Anymore! Fudge.

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / 1 Comment

Well Crap.  We parents are so creative.  When I want to use the “F” word, I don’t because I have kids and they hear and repeat everything.  I am always happy when my kids use language in its appropriate context, but there are some who frown upon cursing from the pre-school set.  Admit it–there is nothing cuter and funnier than when someone else’s kid curses.  HILARIOUS.

So we were at the Magic House yesterday.  After we parked I was not fast enough getting out of the car and I hear Noah laughing. I get up an I hear “Lets get out of the frickin car.”

“What did you say?”

“Nothing” says the little boy sheepishly.

“You don’t say that word Noah.”

‘Well you do.”

“Yes and I’m an adult.”  I also wanted to scream I say it because I can’t say what I really want to say. I say it because I don’t want you to learn the other word.  But the problem is that when I hear him say “frickin” I really hear him say the other word–because that is totally what it has come to mean now.  The word we use to replace the word we want to use has now come to mean the same thing as the word we don’t want our kids to use and now I don’t want him to say “frickin.”  This all means I have to find a new word and lord help me I don’t want it to be “fudge.”  That just totally sucks.

So. fess up readers–what are your replacement curse words and have your kids begun to commandeer them?

Keys

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / Leave a comment

I have a terrible history with keys–some due to my own actions and some due to the actions of others.  But the result is always the same “Where the hell are my keys?”  I must utter this 10 times a day.  I’d like to blame it on old age but really, keys and I just don’t get along.  I lose my keys in my bag every day.  I mean it every day.  I know that I should try to be more organized  and that I should maybe put my keys in the same place every time.  But I don’t and I’d like to think I can and would but I’m going to be honest–that just isn’t going to happen.  So, I usually just waste time each day searching for my allusive keys. To make matters worse (I know–could this possibly be any more boring) my car key is separate from the rest of my keys.  So not only do I get to lose one set of keys a day–I often get to lose 2.

Today, the kids and I went out and Bill played golf.  I couldn’t find my house keys on Friday and still haven’t–I am thinking/hoping that I left them at work.  I didn’t think to tell Bill to not lock the door.  So we get home from a long day and it hits me–“Shit I don’t have keys.”  So I weighed my options–tried to lift the screens on the windows in the back to climb in.  No luck. I finally did manage to get the screen up on a front window and get the window up so that I could hurl myself up and through the window.  It was frighteningly easy–aside from the two 60lbs dogs trying to lick my face off as I tried to pull my big ass through the window.

I need to find my keys and remember to lock those windows.