Kid stuff

So a few weeks ago my 8 yr old son went to a birthday party for one of his friends who was turning 9. Normally I wouldn’t be sure about letting a kid that young go to a sleepover, but this is my friends’ son and the boys have practically grown up together, so I wasn’t worried. Kyle was nervous though and I promised that if he got upset or wanted to come home that we’d come out and get him. But the night progressed and we didn’t get any tear-filled phone calls so by morning I was convinced it was sleepover success.  And then at 10:30 am the phone rang.

From the sound of my friend’s voice I knew something was wrong and I immediately thought: Urgent Care? Emergency room? But no, nothing like that just… well, apparently when two of the boys fell asleep, the other four decided to draw on the sleeping kids with a red marker. A red sharpie to be exact. So my son (who is definitely the champion deep sleeper in our house) now had a red monocle and several squiggly lines down the side of his face. My friend assured me that she had done her best to clean his face and that she’d read all the offending boys the riot act and made them all apologize first thing that morning and that they had all been fine and no one was crying and they were playing nicely together and she was so, so sorry.

I thought it was freaking hilarious. I actually laughed out loud and I assured her that I wasn’t mad. How many sleepovers had I been to where stuff like that happened? Half the fun of girl scout camp was trying to stay awake long enough so you didn’t end up with shaving cream in your hand or your bra in the freezer. Those were good times. Plus, this is my son; the kid who comes home with so much paint on his body after art class I’ve had to explain that the idea of a self-portrait is not to actually turn yourself into a work of art. And don’t get me started on the number of temporary tattoos and stamped smiley faces I’ve scrubbed of his forehead.

Unfortunately, not everyone felt the same. The second sharpie-d kid seemed fine at the party, but after dad took him home he got upset.  The mom freaked out and called my friend. She demanded that each boy call her son and apologize and that this was a clear case of bullying that had to be dealt with accordingly.

Now, I have issues with what I feel is the over-use of the word “bullying,” which I will not go into now, but aside from that I wondered what I would do if Kyle HAD been upset about the incident (when I eventually saw him, he told me all about it and the biggest issue he had was having to get his face scrubbed). I can’t say for sure but I don’t think I would have called and demanded a personal apology. I know my friend well enough to know that, her kid at least, was not going to get out of this lightly. If Kyle was upset I think I would have sat him down and discussed it; told him all the stupid stuff my friends and I did to each other and explain that sometimes, this is just what kids do. The birthday boy and one of other kids have been his friends for years (the other three kids we don’t know, they go to different schools) and they’ve had little fights before and will again. I do not believe that my son’s friends meant to target him or pick on him specifically he just fell asleep first.

I suppose that the other boys might have been more mean about it (we don’t know them and Kyle did have some issues with one of them earlier at the party, so maybe he is a troublemaker, but that’s not really the point). The point is that I want to teach both my kids that sometimes stuff like this happens and you just have to roll with it. Kids tease. And even the best of friends play jokes on each other and laugh at each other and fight with each other sometimes. The key is to be able to roll with it and I’m glad that Kyle was able to do that in this instance.

The other side of the story is that maybe this kid didn’t know the others well. Maybe he had felt teased and singled out. Maybe there was a history there, I don’t know. But it did present me with another learning opportunity for my kids in the form of “what would you have done?” Kyle insists that, were he awake, he would NEVER have done such a thing. Do I believe him? Not really. He’s a good kid, but so are his friends and I have a feeling that he’d be right in there with them. It was a good opportunity to talk with both kids about making good choices and peer pressure and all that. It’s not the first time we’ve had that conversation, nor will it be the last; these things will happen again and again in various ways for a long time now.  Sometimes they will be the marker and other times they will be the canvas; it’s how life goes.

The most important thing in all this is that my kids and I have learned some valuable lessons that will help us through the next few years: 1) When kids come over, hide the sharpies and 2) Never fall asleep first.

Easing back in

For Lent this year I decided to give up the activities in my life that I put under the broad category of “time suckers.”  These are the things that are not really helpful, necessary or beneficial in my daily life and include Facebook, Pinterest, and Tumblr as well as some of the more mindless games I play on my phone like jewel quest. Also included are the majority of YouTube videos, particularly the ones I watch by myself (I allowed myself Lizzie Bennett Diaries, Vlogbrothers, and Crash Course but I couldn’t watch more than fifteen minutes of videos each day if no one else was watching with me). I figured that if I wasn’t spending time with the nonsense stuff, I could devote more time to real accomplishments.

At first it was weird; I felt funny not knowing what everyone was up to. I took fewer pictures because I didn’t have a place to upload them too. I had to come up with my own ideas for Easter centerpieces because I couldn’t look it up on Pinterest. I missed some major events in friends lives because they didn’t tell me, assuming I’d read it on Facebook. I barely know what the hot button political topic is right now. I was invited to several events that I didn’t know about because the invite was on Facebook. (Disclaimer: I did respond to any personal messages sent to me, because I could do that on my phone without seeing the whole site and it only happened twice anyway.)

But here’s the thing. Right now it is Tuesday, April 2nd. I have been “free” to go back to all my usual pursuits for two days. But I haven’t. I have not logged on to Facebook. I haven’t checked Pinterest. I did watch a few videos that I’d missed, but only the ones I’d really wanted to see. I played one round of jewel quest and got bored. I feel like, at this point I could simply walk away from most of that and not really care. But I probably won’t.

Chances are that when I’m done writing this, I will log on to Facebook and post it. I’d like to think that I will then log off again and go about my day. But more likely I will check on some of my friends and see if anything important has happened. My urge to stay away is in combat with my awareness that these sites are actually a bit useful. Events and news once sent via email is now all done on Facebook. My boss frequently sends me pinterest ideas for kids crafts and staff appreciation events. I could close my accounts and go away completely but it would complicate things.

So, I’m trying for the middle road. I hope to find the balance between leaving social media altogether and letting it run my life. My goal is to only log onto Facebook once a day, maybe less. I will set an alarm if I go onto certain sites and when the timer goes off, I’m done. Will it work?  Will I get sucked back in? I don’t know, but I’ll keep you posted.

 

If you give a mom…

(with apologies to Felicia Bond)

If you give a mom a broom, she will sweep the kitchen floor. 

As she is sweeping the floor, she will notice that the garbage is full and needs to be taken out.

When she takes out the garbage, she’ll notice that it’s a beautiful day and she’ll want to stand on the back porch and look around and feel the sunshine.

As she’s feeling the sunshine she’ll notice that all the snow has melted and the backyard looks like a landfill. Of course, she’ll want to clean it up.

As she walks around the yard picking up the bits of garbage, soggy doggy tennis balls and broken toys, she’ll notice that the wind has blown all the leftover leaves from the entire neighborhood up against her fence.

Because it’s ugly and she doesn’t want the grass to die, she’ll get the rake and rake up the leaves.

As she’s raking the leaves she’ll realize she needs clear plastic bags to put the leaves in, so she’ll go into the kitchen to find some. When she walks into the kitchen she will accidentally track in some mud and she’ll want to sweep it up. 

So she’ll ask you to hand her the broom. 

A Clean Start

I don’t know what it is about January; maybe it’s the new year, maybe it’s the desire for a fresh start, maybe it’s all the crap laying around the house from Christmas and the fact that I can’t get outside to escape it, but January always makes me want to go through my house and throw everything away.

Okay well, maybe not everything. But every year around this time I just get the urge to re-organize and clear out the crap. My husband and kids hate this mostly because a lot of the crap I want to throw away is theirs. I mean, my stuff is good and nice and useful; their stuff is clutter and junk. Besides, since I’m the one who picks it all up I should get to decide what stays, right?

Well… sort of. The truth is that since I do have the majority of the say over what comes into the house, I’ve done my best to put the brakes on the accumulation. For the last couple of years I have tried to maintain at least a one-to-one buying and tossing ratio. For each thing I bring into the house I try to get rid of one thing as well. It isn’t always possible but it helps. It also makes me consider purchases more carefully if I know something else will have to go.

But despite my best efforts, the stuff comes in. My kids have their own rooms and a basement play room, so they are definitely the stuff-accruing champions of the house. Plus my son hates throwing anything away and that includes actual garbage. It’s like he’s never heard of a garbage can. I’m a little worried that if I don’t keep up on his room, we’ll have to call in the people from “hoarders.”

So the first spot I attack every year is my son’s room. Considering that we’ve just had Christmas and his birthday is the end of January, he often gets subjected to my initial throw-it-away fever. He’s a pretty good sport and as long as I’m a little sneaky I can get rid of most of the junk without too much complaint. My daughter is getting to the age where she keeps her room pretty neat on her own and she’s like me, she hates keeping useless stuff around. Plus, about half her room is taken up by her guinea pigs’ giant cage, so she doesn’t have extra space for clutter.

The husband poses the biggest cleaning problem. He doesn’t buy much but like his son he hates getting rid of things. I try to be delicate and ask him nicely if he really thinks he’ll need  boxes of old computer parts or an entire shoe box full of 5 1/4 inch floppy disks. He usually comes back with some line about how he’s “saving it to show the kids.” (Okay, save one. Not two hundred.) I have slowly been able to weed out some of his old things but I have to be careful how I word it. He thinks that I only attack his stuff and never my own, which is not at all true, but the underlying problem is we don’t see eye to eye on what actually constitutes “mine,” “yours” and “ours.”

I think that the things I use or buy for myself personally are mine, while he feels that anything he doesn’t need or use is mine too. For example, when he lived alone he had three bath towels. Total. That’s all a person needs: one to use, one in the wash and one extra just in case. So in his mind all the towels over the three he needs do not belong to him. That’s all mine. This goes for dishes, pots, pans, utensils, furniture, and probably even the TV. Anything in his desk, his computer and his dresser is his. The rest is mine. This will be great in the divorce but it’s a bit annoying right now. So I have to do my best to get rid of the junk and keep the house clutter free without making him feel like I’m throwing all his precious stuff away.

But we are making progress there too. I have tried to make a point of letting him see me go through some of the cabinets, so he knows that I’m keeping up my end of the deal. I even agreed to reduce some of the Christmas items when we packed up this year. (I was going to anyway, but I let him think it was his idea.) And the other day I got him to finally show the kids what an old floppy disk looks like.

“Wow,” my son said. “Do they still work?” 

“Well,” my husband replied, “if we can find the right kind of old computer…”

I think I’m going to need to keep my eye on those two. 

 

 

It’s time

Well, I can’t put it off any longer. I’ve stretched it out about as far as most people consider proper, maybe I’ve even gone too far.  It’s time to take down the Christmas decorations.

Actually, if you look around my neighborhood you’d think it was still Christmas. About half of the people on my end of the street still have their outdoor lights on. And according to the extremely un-scientific and unofficial Facebook poll I recently took, it’s about 60/40: most have taken them down but a good portion still hold out. Epiphany seems to be the stopping point for many people since it marks the end of the Christmas season. And I know Christmas is over, but sometimes I just have trouble letting go. It’s all just so pretty. I like the way the mantle looks with all those lights behind the nice little manger and I like how the street looks with all the tress a-glow.

I think that’s the problem for me, I just can’t stand how dark it gets once those lights are turned off. It doesn’t help that I live on the cheap end of the street where people voted against having streetlights put in (that was about 40 years ago by the way, isn’t it time for a re-vote?). Once the Christmas lights are off, it’s pretty gloomy and I think that’s why so many people on my block still have them up. Plus, if everyone keeps them up, who’s going to complain? Well, eventually someone will and I don’t want to be that last hold-out who gets the “redneck light-lady” label.

The guy across the street has figured out a way to beat the system. He has a small ornamental tree in his front yard that he keeps lit with white lights all year round. He just adds whatever seasonal decorations are appropriate: pumpkins, wreaths, light up hearts, shamrocks, an Easter egg and an American flag that stays lit all summer until it’s pumpkin time again.

I think this year I’m going to take a page out of his book. It’s going to be (relatively) warm this weekend, so I have no good excuse for not taking the decorations down. But I do have one apple tree in my side yard that is draped with some of those bluish looking LED’s. I couldn’t turn them on with other Christmas lights because I have a thing about mixing the two kinds of white lights (it’s an illness) but I think I’m going to turn them on once the others are down. Maybe I can find some light up hearts to add-on or some green lights for March. Maybe my own light up Easter egg? I’ll join the ranks of the other crazy-holiday-light-people on my block.

But first it’s time to box up the manger and bust out the snowman collection. I might even still leave some lights on the mantle for them.

Home again. Bleh.

It’s never easy to come back home after a vacation. This year I’m having an especially hard time since my vacation was two weeks in Orlando FL. (where it is currently…let me check…71 degrees) and home is in Buffalo (where it is…wait for it…21).

Don’t get me wrong, I love Buffalo. No, really I do! I love its delicious wings and its horrible football team and its friendly yet tough people who can look a lake effect snowstorm in the eye and laugh. I’m proud to be one of those people. Usually.

But right now I’m cold. And I have a headache and I’m just plain grumpy.

I know that this will pass. Although it feels like a long way off, March and April will be here soon and the snow will melt and the air will warm up and everything will be all sunshine and roses. In the meantime I will get the flannel sheets on my bed and make lots of hot cocoa (maybe with a little peppermint schnapps for good measure). I will wear my fuzzy slippers and curl up on the couch. And when spring finally comes I will appreciate every moment of it. I will bask in the sun and go to the beach and get a tan even-though-I-know-it’s-bad-for-me.

But at the moment I just feel like complaining because my kitchen has been taken over by drippy boots and wet snow pants.

There’s not even any hockey to watch.

And I still need to get the suitcases unpacked and the laundry done and the house clean.

And it’s really freaking cold.

Santa?

A few weeks ago Jayna brought me her Christmas list.

“Great! Do you have a separate list for Santa?”

“No, he already knows what I want.” She looked at me with all the confidence and wisdom of a nine-year old. “Besides, he’s not real.”

I’ll be honest; I knew this was coming. We lost the tooth fairy about a year ago and I had a feeling last Easter that the rabbit might be on his way out too. She is very astute. Nothing gets by her. But still I didn’t know how to respond. Admit the “truth”? Lie?

“That’s too bad,” I said. “You don’t believe, you don’t receive.”

“Well,” she looked less confident. Concerned, I was sure, about the long list of items she’d just handed me. “Maybe he’s real. I just don’t know.”

I really wanted to take the conversation further. Because we were in the house where younger ears might hear, I let it go, but I had a lot of conflicting thoughts. It wasn’t that I was worried about her growing up. That is something I’ve never feared or shied away from. She will grow up and I look forward to her doing so. In fact, that’s one of the reasons I was inclined to just tell her the truth. Nine isn’t very old, but my hope is that the trust I’m building with her now will help to carry us through the coming years. When the BIG issues and questions come up, I want her to know that I’ll answer honestly and that I won’t lie or try to keep her in the dark. I will always tell her the truth that she needs and is ready to hear.

And I think that is probably the reason I didn’t tell her right then. I wasn’t sure she was really ready to hear it. She looked doubtful, questioning, but still willing to hold out hope that Santa was real. I know she’ll figure it out and I know she’ll be fine when she does. I wasn’t traumatized upon finding out the secret and I don’t think she will be either.

Just to be on the safe side, I re-opened the conversation when we were driving in the car, where no one else could hear.

“So, what’s your beef with Santa?”

She explained that she knew about the tooth fairy and she was pretty sure about the Easter bunny (she and her friends had gathered evidence and compared stories) and it just didn’t seem, “you know…possible” that one guy could do all that in one night. But she still wasn’t sure. So, I explained a little. I didn’t go so far as to tell her Santa was a big fake, but I explained how there was a St. Nicolas and how that legend and feeling had been carried on by people throughout generations. I also told her that I believe in Santa and that lots of grownups do too. And that’s not a lie. I doubt I would get all the important things done in time for Christmas without a little magic each year. She seemed content with that answer and I think it was sufficient to keep the lines of communication open.

I don’t worry about her blowing it for the other kids in the family either. She’s been a great little conspirator when it comes to the tooth fairy thing and I think, for this year at least, she’s still hedging her bets. After all, she’s got a long Christmas list.

Fahrenheit 451

I just finished reading Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. I read it because an online community to which I belong has chosen it for their summer book club. I am fairly certain that I was supposed to have read this book at some point during my education, but apparently never did.

Published in 1953, this book continues to be relevent today. I could go on for a long time about all the ways this book is eerily similar to our modern lives. In many ways television, movies, the internet and even to some extent print works like newspapers and magazines serve to distract us from the important matters of the world and fill us with mildly entertaining drivel. I’m not suggesting that we have become a society that completely ignores the important matters of the world, but when TomKat’s divorce comes in near the top of the day’s news items, I start to worry.

In the novel books become forbidden not because the government censors them, but because people start censoring themselves. They want everyone to be happy above all else and in order for that to happen no one must feel slighted or have their own ideas put down. Ideas themselves are dangerous, because if you have an opinion there will always be someone who disagrees and disagreement leads to unhappiness. So why not get rid of thought? Do away with opinions and let everyone live happily?

Almost everyday I encounter an opinion or a position on a topic that disagrees with my own. And it pisses me off. Why can’t they understand? Why can’t they see it like I do? Are they stupid? Uneducated? Ignorant? Don’t they get it? It can be very frustrating and it certainly doesn’t make me happy.

But there is something almost reassuring there too. Do I wish that everyone thought the same as me? Well, sure because (since I’m so obviously correct about everything all the time) if everyone thought like me we’d have peace and justice and happiness in the world. Huzzah! But at the same time, I like that there is questioning. I like that we can discuss and debate and think and imagine possibilities other than those we have in front of us. It is important for us as human beings to think, rather than to be told. To make choices rather than having them made for us.

For me, this is the heart of Bradbury’s novel. If we eliminate debate, remove thought and do away with disharmony all in the pursuit of nothing but happiness, then we lose the ability to recognize those things which could make us truly happy and truly fulfilled as human beings. And I for one think that we are all better off because of those folks on the other side of the isle.

Of course, you’re free to disagree with me.

How I (plan to) spend my summer vacation.

For the last few summers (and winters and springs and…) my main goal has been to Finish My Book. And since the book is now done (well not done, but it has a beginning, middle and end and is being read over by some volunteer editors for me) I decided it would be a good idea to make some new summer goals for myself. So here they are

1. Walk or bike 50 miles that I would otherwise drive. I live in a very pedestrian friendly area and many things I need are close by, so it makes sense to walk more. Since we were blessed with a warm spring, I have already logged 32 miles toward this goal, and I’m curious just how high I can get it, especially if the weather stays nice well into fall.

2. Read at least 7 “Classic” books. I’m not entirely sure what counts as classic, but pretty much anything I should have read in high school fits the bill. My Kindle phone app has a nice selection of free classics that I can download, so it seems a pity not to read them. I am currently in the middle of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and I downloaded The Scarlet Letter (which I read but don’t remember well). Also, the Nerdfighter summer book club is reading Fahrenheit 451, but that one isn’t free so I got it from the library. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ev_c1Jc1IMQ if you’re curious about the book club

3. Blog more, maybe weekly? Since I’m not actively writing the aforementioned book, I want to get back to blogging more often. There are about ten weeks in the official no-school-and-therefore-less-work-for-me summer, so I’m shooting for one blog a week. We’ll see how it goes!

Happy summer everyone!

Parenting is for the birds?

Every so often something happens that keeps me up at night wondering if I’m getting this parenting thing right.

I pride myself in being laid back when it comes to child rearing. I’m pretty much the opposite of a tiger mother. Sea turtle mother? Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I left my babies buried in the sand and hoped for the best. Maybe a bird mother; I laid my eggs, guarded them, let them hatch, fed them some and now I’m pushing their tiny butts out of the nest.

Not really, they are only 7 and 8 (I’m sorry, I meant “eight-but-I’ll-be-nine-in-April”) so I’m not ready for them to fly the coop just yet, but since my oldest is halfway to eighteen, I am certainly getting them ready. By this I mean that I try not to be overprotective or over-involved in their lives. Don’t mistake me; I am involved. I know when all their games, practices, scout meetings and major math tests are. I know who their best friends are and what their highs and lows of the day are. But I keep a healthy distance as well. I attend most games but avoid practices whenever I can. I will ask if she’s studied for the math test but I won’t spend hours quizzing her. And I will help him bake a cake for the Cub Scout cake decorating contest, but I won’t do if for him.

That last bit is the part that has me thinking. There was, in fact, a cake decorating contest this week for Kyle’s cub scout pack (to celebrate cub scouting’s birthday, I think, I may not have actually read the entire memo.) When I asked Kyle if he wanted to bake a cake he was kind of “meh” about it. Sure he’d decorate a cake, but he didn’t really want to go to the store and have to buy stuff or anything. On the other hand, I was starting to get into it. What could we do to illustrate the “cub scouting theme?” Camping? Maybe make a candy fire on the cake? Maybe we could go to the craft store and buy little people or something! But that’s when I hit the brakes. This was not my project, it was his and this was not a contest between adults, but between six-to-ten year old boys right? Right. Just like the pinewood derby cars were.

So I gave him options. I pulled out all the mixes and frosting I already had, and told him that if he wanted different flavors or colors we could go get some. But no, we had what he wanted already. Orange. A set of Halloween themed cake and frosting that I’d never gotten around to using last October.
“Orange?” I asked him.
“Yep, like my tiger cub bandanna.”
“Ok. Orange it is.”
So he made an orange cake. And he really did make it himself. He read the box, sprayed the pan, learned how to set the oven, broke the eggs, measured the oils and water (with some help), poured it all together and did the blending (after all a mixer is a power tool). I helped him pour it into the pan and I put it in and took it out of the oven, but that’s it. The next day he smeared on the orange frosting and used chocolate chips to spell out “Pack 229.” Then he decided it was too plain so he added a bunch of candy hearts (“because they are yummy!”) and some pink frosting around the edges (because it was the only color we had.) So there we had it. An orange and red and pink cake. Made all by himself.

So we went to the meeting and put our cake on the table with the others. And it became obvious pretty quickly that most of the other boys had a bit more help with their cakes. A few cakes were obviously child created; sliding slightly, covered in frosting, things spelled out in pretzels, but most were pretty dang professional looking. Shaped like cars and race tracks or forests complete with little fake craft store trees.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not criticizing the other parents. I am sure they had a really good time making their cakes and I’m sure the kids helped. But I also was feeling pretty depressed at our sad little cake. I even heard one dad whisper to a mom, “What’s that one supposed to be?” And it took all my effort not to snap back “It’s supposed to be what happens when a seven-year old actually decorates a cake by himself!” But I kept my mouth shut. After all this wasn’t about me, it was about Kyle and he seemed to not notice or care that his cake wasn’t as fancy as some of the others. I was probably overreacting. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d taken something too personally. Hell, it wouldn’t be the first time this week even.

So I kept my mouth shut and watched my kid snap photos of all the cakes, and watched as he cheered on the other kids who won certificates for their cakes (there was no category for “Cake most obviously made by an actual child” much to my dismay). Of the four kids in his tiger den, two of them won prizes and he and the other boy (whose cake was my personal favorite and should have one the award for bluest icing) clapped for them and the other winners. They, and all the other kids, were good sports and good teammates and then they got to eat a whole mess of cake and red juice, so it was a win all around.

Later though, I was having my doubts. Was it better to really let him do things his own way, even when I knew going in that it wouldn’t be “as good” as the others? He had noticed that very few people took some of his cake. I had tried to smile and give the line that it meant more for us to take home, but who was I kidding? Was I doing him a disservice by not pushing him more to create a really awesome cake. Was my “bird mother” approach really more of a “sloth mother”? Too lazy to be bothered to put just a little more effort into my kids’ lives? I’m sure some of the other parents thought so. Would my kid be happier and better adjusted if, just this once, he’d gotten to win the award? Maybe. I don’t know.

What I do know is this, one of the first things I heard when I woke up this morning was “Mom, can I bake another cake today?”