Suck It Up, Mom

We’ve been driving past a lot of Tutor-Times lately, it seems.  My children are enamored with these places.  The buildings are huge and friendly looking, and they have these awesome play areas outside that are always covered in happy children. 

Yesterday as we drove past one Sarah asked me what this Mecca-of-Happiness was.  I explained to her that in a lot of families the daddy and mommy both have to go to work every day, and when they’re both gone they leave their kids there so they can be safe. 

A place where you get to go play all day and not have your parents around to tell you what to do and get you in trouble?  Sarah loved the idea.  A lot. 

She’s been telling me ever since that I need to go and get a job.  More than just a couple times. 

I know that she doesn’t understand the message she’s sending with this – doesn’t see that what I hear her saying is: “we don’t care about everything you do all day and night for us – we’d rather be with strangers than you.”  I know that’s it’s normal for kids to say stuff like this, and that there isn’t a deeper meaning to it more than ‘hey, that looks like fun.’   But --- it still sucks. 

It grips all those feelings of guilt and inadequacy that all parents carry with them, yanks them through your chest so you have to take a good hard look at them, and then pours salt and lemon juice all over your gaping, dripping wounds. 

But, don't worry about it mom.  Just keep doing what you're doing, knowing that these feelings will never go away and that as your children grow they will only grow more eloquent in describing your many failings to you.  

Super.

Someday in, like, thirty years they'll gaze into the eyes of their own little hellions, look up at you, and realize a part of all the crap you put up with.  They might even apologize.  If you're lucky, they'll buy you chocolate.

Sarah - this is my notice to you in the future:

You owe me a whole lot of chocolate.  Like, I might get diabetes from all the chocolate you owe me.

Of Fairy Doors and Magic

Last week Sarah was just about ready to lose her first tooth.  Her first two teeth, actually.  I’ve been told it’s rare to lose two teeth at once, especially two right next to each other.  Sarah’s loss, though spectacular, is made somewhat less singular when you take into account that the only reason they were both loose at once was because she ran into a wall while racing Evee through the house.

This is right after the first one came out.  The second one fell a few hours later.

She’s happy about it, though.  For the last six months at least she’s come to me from time to time announcing gleefully that one of her teeth is finally loose and as soon as it comes out the Tooth Fairy will come and bring her presents!  To her dismay, the teeth were never actually loose, and we had to have a talk with her about how the Tooth Fairy doesn’t take lists of requests a la Santa.

It did make me start to wonder what exactly the Tooth Fairy should bring, though.  And how to do it?  As soon as her teeth waxed loose for real she began telling us all that she was going to catch the Tooth Fairy.  For those of you not acquainted with my eldest, she has a bit of a sneaky streak in her.  I wouldn’t put it past her to hold the tooth in her fist all night, or hide it elsewhere in her bed, or tie it to a string connected to her finger, etc.  I’ll be the first to admit her determination to catch the Tooth Fairy intimidated me.  What kind of mystical creature would I be if I were caught on my very first night on the job?

In hindsight I could have just made Jack do it.  Then, at least, the weight of the disillusionment of our child wouldn’t have been on my shoulders. 

Instead, I came up with a different solution, aided by the lovely people on Pinterest who think up everything better than you could ever do on your own.  A fairy door!  They’re cute, easy to obtain, and massively simplify the ‘searching under your sleeping child’s pillow for a tooth that may or may not be there’ problem. 

I drug the kids down to the Hobby Lobby and let them help me pick one out, along with all the paint colors.  I wanted it to look nice, so when we got home I painted the front and the kids did the back (where the fairy comes in from, so it’s the side she sees).

The fairy door sits on the floor just inside the kid’s room.  The tooth is placed on the front porch where is it traded for a dollar in the darkness of the cold, still night.

My childrens are delighted and I’m starting to wonder what other fairies could visit our house through our oh-so-convenient door. 

How did your parents instill a sense of magical wonderment into your childhood? What do you do for your kids?

Dishes are the enemy of my soul

I hate doing the dishes more than just about anything.  A more tedious chore never has been invented by mankind.

Conversely, I enjoy cooking.  I think its fun and is oftentimes (to my family’s dismay) a creative outlet for me.  This, obviously, leads to much of that thing I despise.

I share this deep-seated abhorrence with my beloved husband.  In most things we are extremely compatible; the ying to the other’s yang.  But when the sink is overflowing with a disheartening amount of food preparation materials we glance at each other and the stand off begins.  I can’t be quite sure what goes on in his head as we size each other up, but my thought process goes something along the lines of, ‘I bet he gets grossed out and caves before I do.’ 

I invariably lose this battle 95% of the time (It’s true.  I’ve kept stats.) because beloved husband has that convenient excuse to get out of the house known as “work” and eventually I run out of things to serve the kids lunch on.

 Paper plates and plastic cups held some appeal as an easy solution for a while.  I discovered that they’re not my main focus of rage, though.  It’s those freaking pots and pans.  Especially anything that needs hand washing.  Actually, I’ve gotten rid of most anything that can’t be put in a dishwasher.  There’s a simple test for finding out which instruments of pain these are: you put everything in the dishwasher and if it doesn’t survive it didn’t deserve to live in the first place.

There is an exception of this rule for children and pets.  These qualify as definitely ‘Hand Wash Only.’  Won’t make that mistake twice.

A Public Service Announcement

So… if you don’t know me very well you may not know that I have a history of passing out.  Not from any real, medical-type reason.  Not even for any good reason.  I don’t pass out when I see massive amounts of blood and gore, I pass out when I hear people talking about blood and gore, not even in massive amounts.  Or I pass out over extraordinarily small injuries.  Equally ridiculous. 

This little quirk began when I was in fifth grade.  I considered myself a bit of a tomboy, and when my teacher announced we would be dissecting a cow eye in class I was unbelievably excited.  Real life, non-censored blood and guts.  Rock awesome.

The day came and my fellow classmates and I crowded around a table to watch the proceedings.  A few friends and I sat up on desks for a better look.  About thirty seconds in to the ordeal a cut was made into the eye, some kind of juice squirted into the crowd, and I was a goner.  I have to say, it was extremely surprising. 

Most memorable is my friend April crying because she thought I’d died. 

Passing out in public for very odd reasons has given me, at least, a number of amusing anecdotes to share, such as that one time my future mother-in-law made me pass out the first time we met. 

What I wish to convey with this story, as well as with any future anecdotes I may share, is the importance of knowing your audience.  I am not alone in my ridiculous condition, and you need to be aware that we are out there being subjected to your nasty stories. 

When people hear someone tell one of these stories about passing out over nothing they naturally like to share a similar story in return.  As in, “That reminds me!  I saw the grossest thing ever yesterday – wait ‘til I tell you!”  Do not do this.  It is a colossal mistake.  Especially when you hear that person say things like,

“Please stop talking.  No really.  You’re making me woozy.  Oh, dear.  I think I need a glass of water.  I’m going down.”

Many a passing-out-over-nothinger has gone down this way.  Myself included.  

Protect your friends: Stop Sharing Gross Stories.

Thank you.

How To Fall In Love...

…with Dogs. So cute and fluffy and loving and perfect – how could you not love them anyway?

I can tell you.  My lovely in-laws have two Goldendoodle (Golden Retriever/Poodle mix) puppies.  Seriously some of the most adorable examples of canines I have ever laid eyes on.  By the age of six months these little scragglemuffin furballs were huge – way bigger than my three year old and closing in on my five year old.  They’re not quite trained yet, either.

So what do you get when you mix two gigantic, excitable baby dogs and small children?  A whole lot of crying, that’s what. 

The dogs take a certain amount of delight in knocking down the three year old and biting her ponytails.  The baby (9 mo) they seem to see as one of their own; whenever he’s crawling around they lie on him, or lie next to him and give him a kind of hug with their bear-sized paws.  It’s a bit unnerving to watch two forty-pound dogs tackle your baby.  He’s a good sport about it, but once they have him properly pinned they nic his binky and run off to chew it to bits. 

The oldest can hold her own, sometimes a bit too well.  She likes to carry/force them up the stairs of the playhouse out back and then force them down the slide.  They do not like this.

As I hope you’ve surmised by now, we don’t get along very well with these dogs, nor them us.  This left us less than excited when the beloved in-laws needed us to housesit for them for a week.  Seven days of so much tackling and crying?  Good gracious.

I am so glad we did it.  The first day or two were a struggle; lots of jumping and tackling.  But then something wonderful happened: the little baby dogs were so worn out by being played with so much they started taking naps – lots of naps.  Or maybe they were fake-sleeping so my eldest would stop chucking them down the slide.  Either way, all that crazy little kid energy + all that crazy dog energy = a whole lot of bodies that want to sleep all afternoon.  Love. 

I grew up with a dog, and have always gotten on well with dogs in general, but watching my kids lying on the floor intertwined with a bunch of furry love fills my heart with happy feelings.  I can’t wait until we can live in a place where we can get a few scragglemuffin furballs of our own.

Magnus being "hugged" by Louie

Swimming Lessons

The beginning of summer brings with it the introduction of swim school at our local public pool.  Like any good mom duly terrified by the endless litany of drowning horror stories brought to you by local media, facebook, strangers in grocery store lines, etc, etc, I signed my girls up for swim lessons. 

The first day of lessons two weeks ago was remarkably like the first day of school; anxious parents almost reluctantly releasing their crying children into the care of strangers.  Marked differences included, but were not limited to: the strangers were teenagers, the crying persisted for many children through the entire lesson, and there was a shocking lack of get to know you time.

“I’m Tim and I’ll be your teacher.  Allow me to take this opportunity to introduce you to the water.”

*push*

Within seconds of meeting, these teenagers had their groups of four to seven children under water, fighting for life, tears streaming down their fat little cheeks.  So sad.

As other parents cringed for the sake of their little ones I found myself wishing I had a swim lesson coach of my own, but instead of swimming we would work on life.  Is that what a life coach is?  I’d always wondered…  

Within two weeks these inexperienced youths were able to take extremely unwilling pupils and transform them into happy fish of varying skill level.  What if I had someone who could chuck me into the deep water of what scares me? 

“Hey you.  Yeah, the one who’s always talked about learning Latin/Skiing/Raising Chickens/Writing a Book/Etc Etc Etc… Your time has come.  Do or Die.”

*push*

They would ignore my crying and whinging, push me into doing new exciting/horrific things, and be the overall driving force of my life.  Sounds awful, but awesome.  Awfesome.

I suppose otherwise I could just develop that little thing called Motivation.  But, ugh.  That sounds hard. 

Where do you find your motivation to jump into the pool of life?  And do any of you know what a Life Coach actually does?  I’m tempted to think it’s not quite as cool as my mental picture. *push*

What Am I, Really?

I find the articles about how much a mom would make if she was paid for what she does depressing.  I think that’s probably the motivating factor behind such articles, especially when combined with ads for spa days and beach vacations along the sidebar. 

If you’re unfamiliar with these little gems they give an incredibly long list of all the things moms do every day with their correlating yearly salary, if they were getting paid.  Nanny, personal chef, personal assistant, maid, chauffer, life coach, janitor, referee, laundress, veterinarian, tech support… the list goes on as far as your creativity. 

Gotta say, when I was a kid not one of those things marked in the top ten list of Things I’d Like to Be When I Grow Up.  (The usual disclaimer of I-love-my-kids-to-pieces-and-would-never-trade-them-for-anything-and-if-you-look-sideways-at-them-I-will-attack-you-like-a-freaking-panther applies here, of course.)  As I look at what I do with my days there really isn’t much that doesn’t fit into one of the aforementioned categories.  I’ve never been an extraordinarily ambitious person, but I feel this longing recently to have more skills than #1 at Not Throwing Up When Cleaning the Gross Stuff Your Kids Do.  I want a hobby, gosh darnit!

This little blog is a start of that, I suppose.  An opportunity every few days to put my thoughts down and remember my creativity extends beyond how to turn broccoli and beans into dinner. 

 Do you have any hobbies (odd or otherwise) to help you remember you’re a person as well as a parent?