Tag Archives: Parenting

August 22, 2011 · 1:42 pm

Slow Down, Birthday Girl

My daughter, my baby, barely needs a stool to help in the kitchen anymore. She stands at my side rolling out dough, perfectly placing cookie cutters like puzzle pieces to cut as many cookies as she can. She does this without prompting. “Mommy, I can do it,” she says. I stand back, reminded all too often these days of how much my kids can do alone and how much less they rely on me. They yearn to be older and independent and capable at times when I just want to hold their hands and show them how and want them to need me.

My little girl is turning 6 this week. It’s not a monumental birthday. It’s not a special age when anything big happens. Turning 5 was huge because kindergarten is a milestone, a turning point from that preschool life of naps and cuddles and sippy cups to homework and adjustment and real problems, to independence. To life away from mom.

But 6? What’s so hard about 6? We survived kindergarten. We did great. Now it’s on to first grade. That’s the problem. From here on, it zips by. The baby fat slowly melts away. By the end of this year, it will be gone. Already taller and thinner, she hardly looks like my baby anymore. I stare at her in amazement and wonder which night it was that she sprang up. When did I miss this?

I can’t buy her those cute Mary Jane shoes anymore. They only make them in toddler sizes and she’s just outgrown that. Everything looks too grown-up for a first-grader, too teen.

She barely fits in my lap now. Her limbs dangle off to the sides like a rag doll. Her head no longer fits neatly under my chin, and we nearly have to sit side-by-side for comfort. I can barely lift her without a lot of grunting and bending my knees first in preparation for her weight. It’s such a workout, and it never used to be.

I’ll admit, this is the age I’ve waited for. When my kids were babies, I was drunk on love and that warm baby smell. But I spent a lot of time dreaming about the wonderful things we’d get to do together when they were this age. Camping, crafting, reading together. I love, LOVE, doing those things with them. I love talking to them and teaching them. Oh, it’s challenging and I want to pull my hair out sometimes, but I never quite adored the baby stage. I had enough of the wiping and the crying and sleep deprivation. I’ve waited for this. Making cookies with them. Choking on my breakfast when they announce my husband’s super long stray ear hair to half a restaurant. Babies’ surprises usually only involve bodily fluids.

Now that we’re here, in this wonderful long-awaited era, I’m pretty damn scared. I feel like a houseful of unexpected guests just arrived and I’m running around in a panic because I’m not ready. I don’t want to miss it. And I want it to slow down. When I secretly wished the whole baby part would speed up just a smidge, I openly beg for this time not to. Because I know this is the best time of my life. Greedy, I know. But they’ll get to have their fun. Before long, my kids will be older and have wonderful lives and experiences, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. They deserve that and I look forward to seeing who they become. But, no hurry.

For now, hearing my kids say, “Hey, let’s pretend…” is music to my ears and there are still a lot of firsts to be part of. That first soccer goal. That first sleepover. That first trip whale watching that I can’t wait to take them on. We still have lots to look forward to. I still catch a glimpse of that baby in there somewhere, in a coy smile or a sideways glance. It lasts only a second, but it fills my heart.

So happy birthday to my baby girl who is turning bigger this week.

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August 16, 2011 · 1:29 pm

Pick, Pick, Pick

I have a confession to make: I am in love with food. I might even go as far as to say I am obsessed with it. Really, I am probably obsessed with food. I like to cook only because it is a means to this food that I love. My days revolve around food and what I am going to eat or cook for my next meal or even the next day or next week. I am always reading recipes. I’m kind of obsessed with those too.

So imagine my joy when my son turns out to love food as much as I do. Even as a toddler, he ate anything I put on his plate, squeezing okra and calling the seeds “eyes.” He ate platefuls of the stuff. He’ll try anything once.

My daughter, however, is my challenge. My beautiful, picky daughter. It breaks my heart that I cannot share this love with her. Cooking she loves. She’ll sidle up to the counter and measure and pour, even taste a little. But put it on a plate in front of her and the battle begins. We’ve tried all the tricks. Everything. None of it works. Nothing.

We have well-meaning friends who offer up advice. Make her try it. How do you make anyone do anything? They don’t know what that would involve, prying open a clamped jaw with my hands and trying to force lasagna down her throat. How to get her to swallow? Rub her throat like a dog who won’t swallow a pill? I can see it now, the looks I’d get in a restaurant…and the escort out.

Or how about making her sit there until she eats it? Yeah, I have better things to do for a week. Do you? Because you can come sit with her until she eats it. Feel free.

The thing is, those things bring tears, yelling, and a whole lot of stuff I don’t want to bring to the table. And believe me, I’ve had to leave it many times. It all leaves me feeling bad. I can’t imagine the damage it does to her. Food should be a pleasant experience, with warm memories like grandma’s kitchen.

The best advice I’ve gotten? Don’t make dinnertime a battle. Put out healthy food and let her make her own choices. Amen. From our pediatrician who raised his own picky eater, who is now a chef. That’s right, a chef.

My daughter eats from all food groups. She loves fruit and often, but not always, prefers homemade to processed, meaning mac ‘n’ cheese and bread aren’t things I can just whip up. A speck of parsley or pepper in her food stresses her out. There’s just not a lot of variety in her comfort zone. I have faith that she’ll get bored with that. I have to trust that she’ll outgrow it. And she’s starting to come around…painfully slowly.

Take, for instance, the grilled cheese she tried recently. Growing tired of her meager menu, she decided a grilled cheese sounded safe. She likes bread. She likes cheese. It felt a little daring to put the two together. Nervously, she licked. I couldn’t bear to watch and paced behind the counter, ready for defeat. My son gave me the play-by-play and quickly announced it was all over: She had eaten the entire thing…and she wanted more. I couldn’t get cheese between two slices of bread fast enough.

Once that one was devoured, she pondered what had just taken place in her mouth. “I didn’t really like that cheese,” she announced. Hmmm. This usually means she doesn’t really like it. But here’s how I get around it: You eat it once, it’s on your menu now, Missy.

“We’ll work on it,” I said. Many tries later, we still can’t get it quite right, but she’s still willing.

I love her, pickiness and all. “You’ll make some man very happy with your high maintenance one day,” I tease. Check in with me in 20 years. I bet she’ll be a food critic. She’s getting good practice.

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August 8, 2011 · 1:23 pm

Hang On to Summer

The end of summer is around the corner and I have mixed feelings. Usually around the first week of August, I’m pulling my hair out. My kids are driving each other mad and me with all the “Stoo-op! Don’t touch me! Get off me” business. But this summer, as my time with them starts to dwindle, I dig my heels into the ground because I’m just not ready for our summer to end. The summers when the kids actually want me around are numbered, and I feel guilty for any missed opportunities. I fill our days with a whirlwind of games, activities, crafts, and cuddles, a party of sorts for a mom who knows she has one last hurrah before her freedom is gone and that union between student and school takes over. Soon it will be homework and soccer and not a lot of time for being carefree. Two-plus weeks and counting here until school begins, and I’m squeezing it in: creek time, detective adventures, a birthday party, more crafts, a sleepover…OK, so maybe I’m going a teeny bit overboard.

I’ll admit there’s some good and bad to school starting again, and here’s the way I see it:

Pros
1. I don’t have to sneak handfuls of chocolate chips, slivers of brownies, or other assorted treats. It is all mine for the taking and I can overindulge as much as I want. No one will be around to judge or beg.
2. I don’t have to bring my kids to the doctor with me, sit in a tiny room, and resist the urge to pull my eyeballs out while they ask for the millionth time when the doctor is coming because, God help me, I’m about to find him and yank him down the hall by his tie and ask him the same question.
3. I don’t have to hear another person talk, scream, wail, whine, or fuss for seven and a half hours of my day if I don’t want to.
4. I don’t have to wipe anything on anybody but myself, at least until 3:00.
5. The only questions I have to answer are “Where do you want to meet for lunch today, Dear?” and “Is your credit card company offering you the best rate…?”

Cons
1. There are suddenly a lot of places to be, a lot of things to do, and a lot of PTA people looking for me.
2. Homework…and the accompanying fussing for 30 minutes (or more on a very bad day) until they finally give in and do it and realize it takes more time to fuss than to actually do their homework.
3. I have to get up when it’s still dark.
4. Did I say homework?
5. I will miss my kids like crazy.

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August 1, 2011 · 10:00 am

Motherhood: I’m Just Along for the Ride

I have a motto as a mom: It’s just a phase, it will end, and I’ll get through it.

For many months, I’ve been tested on every level known to mom. My eight-year-old son yearns for independence of the college set, wanting to do everything his way with none of that motherly advice thrown in. He pushes my buttons like he’s operating a remote control car and I just try to hang on.

We’ve been butting heads over any issue, big or small. I tell him to stop doing something and it’s like telling a two-year-old he has to take a bath during Barney. I have literally been tiptoeing on eggshells.

Many thoughts have raced through my mind: What is going to set him off next? Is it hormones? At 8? Heaven help me when he’s a teenager. And he’s such a sweet kid. Where did my sweet boy go? Something must be wrong with him. Is this normal?

Just what do you do when you tell him to stop and he says no again and again? By gosh, he’s too heavy for me to carry to his room anymore and he knows it. Yelling makes things so much worse. I tried to stay calm, but that was a big test for me. I screamed inside…and what I said was not very nice. For months, it has been up and down, and I’ve been waiting, knowing my motto has always held true. Is this what my next ten years will be like?

And then, just when I was at my breaking point, the ride ended. At least, I think it did. Do the phases just get longer as kids get older? They certainly get harder. But surely they do end.

Walking through a parking lot the other day, my nearly six-year-old daughter and I held hands like always. Surprisingly, my son grabbed my other and in that instant, life was really good. He said, “I love summer,” and gave my hand a light squeeze.

“Yeah, me too,” I said over the lump in my throat. We kept walking and I thought, “I can make it through any bad day for this tiny moment.” I held on as long as I could. As long as he’d let me.

And just when I started to enjoy the calm and started to relax, my daughter, who has been syrupy sweet all these months, entered a phase. There’s no rest for the weary and it’s time for me to buckle up again. Hopefully it will be a short ride.

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July 22, 2011 · 9:16 am

RIP Little Fish

How could one become so attached to an animal the size of a small paper clip? Ask a kid. A kid who will tell you he just had the worst day ever.

We had just returned from a weekend trip, and my son found his fish at the bottom of the bowl. This is the third fish we’ve lost, but he was just as sad as if it were the first. He recently lost a pet hermit crab, Hermie, that we used to let race across our playroom floor. No tears. After a quick backyard funeral, my son wanted to know when he could get another one.

But these fish that he could never hold had a special place in his heart, a certain distinction: that of first pet. At the end of kindergarten, his teacher gave him two fish that had been used for science lessons in his classroom. Mosquitofish. Nothing fancy, and teeny-tiny. They were babies when we got them. Our family has enjoyed watching them chase each other and seeing their family grow. My son taught us everything he learned at school about them.

Fernick and Sammy, that’s what he named them. Turns out they would be parents the first year we had them, and we had to keep a watchful eye. No eggs, live birth, and these fish eat their very young. Our son told us the mommy fish often die after giving birth. He knew signs to look for when she was about to have the babies. Finally, one day I saw a tail hanging out of her. We scooped her into a waiting bowl of water and watched as she gave birth to three pinhead-size fish that looked like specks of dirt falling to the bottom of the bowl. A wiggle and shake and they took off swimming, all eyes.

Soon, just like our son had said, Fernick was dying. And it wasn’t quick. He took it hard.

Months later, a pregnant fish died before giving birth. He didn’t say much about it. I thought maybe we had that initial pet dying thing over with. But when he saw this time that it was Sammy, the dad, at the bottom of the bowl, his heart broke again. I tried to tell him it was one of the other fish. It had lived two years. That’s amazing for bait. But he loved them. He raised them into adults and saw them have babies. He’d had them nearly the entire span of his school career, an eternity to an eight-year-old. Why tears over two of the fish and not even Hermie? It made sense to his heart.

I guess your first pet is special no matter what it is. And size just doesn’t matter.

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July 18, 2011 · 10:21 am

“Mom, I’m Bored!”

We’re into our unscheduled weeks of summer. No trips, no camps, no real plans. Just me and the kids and some much-needed lazy days. Every summer I forget how hard this new routine can be. Going from the rigmarole of school to wearing your pj’s till lunch is a shock to the kiddies. To me it’s grand. Nowhere to be? I leap with pure joy.

I do freelance work from home and took some mornings recently to finish a project. A highly effective mother would have a plan in place to occupy the kids so she could work. It just so happens, I did have a strategy one day: a kid-friendly camera and a scavenger hunt list for the kids to take pictures of. Their photography exploration bought me enough time to finish work, put sheets on the beds, and trim a bush that was two feet higher than it needed to be. Fantastic!

The next day, no plan. Disaster. I noticed them hovering as I got dressed. They sighed. They paced. We began to fuss at each other. Hmm. My first instinct is always to get them to clean up. They usually find something else to do fast. But they cleaned. Boredom was that bad, huh? Back again, as if being next to me is an exciting alternative to the wonderland we have upstairs. Hmmm. With so many toys they forget they have, it should feel like Christmas.

My next trick is to let them know that whatever they find not fit enough to play with must be ready to give away. That threat always works. When left alone a little longer, the kids find something to do. They always do. And of course it involves an 8-foot-by-10-foot mess that I have to maneuver. Then it sits there like a minefield. I hop through it each time I enter the room, loathing it more and more. That night when I announce it’s time to clean up, I get lots of, “Ah, Mom, we’re going to play with it later” and “It took us so long to set it up.” I get it. I was a kid too. So I let them leave it another day or so…until I realize they aren’t really playing with it. And they’re bored—again.

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July 12, 2011 · 9:11 am

6:25 in the Morning

It’s 6:25 a.m. On a Saturday. It’s summer for Pete’s sake. And he’s up, our son the rooster. My husband and I know this because the toilet flushes. No matter what time he goes to bed, his eyes pop open at the first beam of sunlight. He peeks into our room. We don’t flinch. About 15 minutes later he comes in again. “Go read,” I mumble. It’s not even 7 a.m. I see him quietly peek in one last time a bit later before I finally get up.

When he was younger, he used to come in every three minutes and drive us crazy until one of us got up. And sometimes he’d wake up at 5 a.m.—in the dark. That was rough. Now at age 8, most of the time he’ll read. 

I’m not a morning person. He is. Don’t even talk to me until I’ve eaten and showered. I don’t care to chit-chat. The thing about my son is that he has been up for an hour or more and he is bursting with questions. Every sentence starts with Mom, and there are no breaths in between.

“Mom, if a whale washes up on the beach, probably three or four people have to carry it back out into the ocean.”

Well, they’re too big to lift.

“Mom, what happens if a dolphin washes up on the beach? I bet the lifeguards would have to come pick it up and put it back in the water.”

Well, a dolphin and a whale are pretty heavy and if one washes up, it’s sick or dying. Lifeguards don’t do that sort of thing.

“Mom, probably Animal Control comes and takes it to the animal hospital and they fix it.”

I tell him that marine biologists probably come take a look at it there on the beach. It’s really too early for me to function, but he wants some answers.

“Mom, do they have whale sharks at Sea World?”

I haven’t a clue.

“Mom, whale sharks when they open their mouths, it is bigger than our playroom.”

Man, that is really big.

“Mom, if a stingray washes up on the beach, probably the lifeguards can just pick it up by its tail and throw it back into the ocean.”

I don’t know if the lifeguards would touch it. (Oh, make it stop.)

“Mom, but if it’s a minnow, they can just fling it back in.”

Yes, they can just fling it back in. (My brain is hurting. But I smile.)

“Mom, did you know they make the Knight Bus Harry Potter Lego set and it comes with…”

(Not again.)

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July 6, 2011 · 9:50 am

Bedroom Basketball

My son adores his daddy, the big man he literally has to look up to, yearns to be like, and begs to play with. My son often requests one-on-one basketball games in his bedroom with my husband. I’m not sure why he repeatedly takes the pounding. He is all giggles over it and my husband is all game. My son laughs so hard he can’t breathe, and my husband takes every advantage to slam-dunk.

Anywhere in the house, one can hear the screaming and shouting, the thundering footsteps. It sounds like an entire team up there. Nope. Just my husband and son getting in that quality one-on-one time.

I usually stay away from these sweaty mismatched match-ups, but the other night my daughter and I had front-row seats. My husband takes it to the rim and dunks. “OOOOOOOOOOOHHHHH!” he shouts with all the gusto of an announcer calling the Eagles’ Super Bowl–winning touchdown, falling to his knees in utter glory.

My son somehow manages to score between the taunting, the wrestling moves that pin him to the floor, and the tricks that have him reeling with laughter. My husband stuffs the ball under the back of his shirt. “Where’s the ball?” he teases, then displays it as he makes a run toward the net. My son is cackling all the while. “Oh. Did. You. See. That?!” says his dad.

My son gets a few surprises in of his own. My husband takes one to the groin. Luckily, it’s just a foam ball. The crowd and the opposing team roar with laughter.

It’s been a close game, but Dad gets a second wind and a few more shots. “Oh man, off the ceiling, off the clock, and iiiiinn!!!” my husband screams.

48-40! Game over.

My son decides to just make practice shots for a bit. I’m sure his face just needs a break from all that smiling.

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June 28, 2011 · 10:29 am

Whoopee!

On vacation a couple of weeks ago, I was reminded of a big difference between my husband and me. It involves an 8-year-old boy, a first encounter with a whoopee cushion, a crowded beach store, and lots of giggles.

While shopping in one of the many tourist stores, my son came upon a self-inflating whoopee cushion. I knew he had never seen one, so I sat back to take in his reaction. Another first in his life I didn’t want to miss. In a corner at the back of the store, he repeatedly plopped his bottom onto the cushion and laughed at the resounding flatulence. He, his cousin, and sister took turns trying to get the best noise. I was the adult overseeing this nonsense and got a few giggles out of it myself, remembering my own fun with one many years ago. It wasn’t a big scene, just some innocent laughter and then I broke it up.

My son took the cushion and said he wanted to show it to his dad. I wondered how this would turn out, but I didn’t make it through the crowd in time to see my husband’s reaction.

My husband recalled the scene later: “Our son came up to the front of the store where everyone was standing in a long line at the register. He put the whoopee cushion on the floor and said, ‘Dad, you’ve got to see this!’ and plopped down on it. Pffffttttt! I just walked away and pretended he wasn’t my son.”

I sometimes feel our roles are reversed, when a whoopee cushion disturbs my husband more than me. What would I have told my son at the register in front of all those people? I know I would have told him to put it back…after I stopped laughing.

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