I Should Have Known Better

I was both a precocious reader and a very sensitive child, and accordingly (and regrettably) read some books long before I was mature enough to properly process their contents.  A few of the Sherlock Holmes stories terrified me as a fourth grader--"The Adventure of the Speckled Band" in particular--and James Michener's "Poland" gave me nightmares for weeks the following year.  (Is there any piece of land other than present-day Israel where so much blood has been shed so cruelly for so many generations??)

Thing One is very much like I was in both respects, so we have to be careful what books we allow him to read at this stage of the game, especially inasmuch as he loves biographies.  I don't remember how the topic of explorers came up, but Himself and I thought that the book "Endurance," the story of Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated 1914 Antarctic expedition and subsequent adventures on the way home, might be safe for him to read, given that everyone in the crew came back alive against impossible odds.  He started reading that a few days ago.

Tonight, I was sitting in the kitchen going through my binder for tomorrow's Board of Ed meeting when I suddenly became aware of racking sobs coming from upstairs, where Thing One was reading before bed.  I sprinted upstairs to find out what was going on, only to discover that he'd reached the part of the story where the starving men killed the expedition's dogs for food and was utterly distraught at the thought of having to take a knife to our beloved pet dog under any circumstances.

Parenting fail: we'd forgotten about that part of the story.  Time to go back to the children's section of the library for bedtime reading material!
      

      

 

Vacation, All I Ever Wanted

Crazy weekend.  Just got back from my in-laws' house; we spent most of the day there and dropped off Thing Two and Petunia, who will be staying with them for a week.  (Thing One gets his time there solo later in the month.)  When we left, I commented to Himself that this week is the closest thing I'll get to a vacation this summer, with only one kid at home and him at golf camp four of the mornings.

We did take a short family trip last week, and we have another one planned for the end of the month, but the problem with being a SAHM is that by definition, mothering is my job.  And that's a 24/7 kind of job that knows no holidays.  I have to worry about small people eating and sleeping and having appropriate clean clothing whether we are at home or not!  When we took beach trips back when the kids were very small, I used to joke with Himself that all of my normal responsibilities were just being transplanted to a place where it was harder to get them accomplished.

Now that all of the kids are in school full time, I have more down time during the day, except inasmuch as all the practicalities (laundry, cooking, cleaning, shopping, etc) have to be taken care of while they are at school, since after-school hours are a blur of kid activity every day of the week.  But during the summer?  Forget it.  Constant mess and craziness and bickering and eating and driving.  Ye gods.  For a SAHM, the summer is the equivalent of the run-up to April 15th for an accountant!  When everyone else is off, we are on and racking up some serious overtime.  Saw an e-card the other day that said, "Cleaning with kids in your house is like brushing your teeth while eating Oreos."  Ain't that the truth.

In the final push to September now.  I love my kids, really I do.  They are getting bigger before my eyes, and I don't want to wish away the relatively short time I have with them.  I gave up a good, lucrative career voluntarily to be home with them, as a matter of fact.  I know that childhood is short and adulthood long and I didn't want somebody else raising my kids.  But Mama is tired, and she needs a break. And she is beyond grateful to her wonderful in-laws for giving her one, while also doing so much fun stuff with the grandkids that they look forward to this week all year!  Win-win.

Best Husband Ever

I think I need professional help.

Some geocaches are marked on the official map by question marks, which means that you need to solve a puzzle of some sort in order to find that particular cache.  We've established that I can't pass up a puzzle to save my life, which will absolutely be my downfall one of these days.

My kids had soccer camp in a nearby town this past week.  Because I had to be in that vicinity anyway, I checked the geocache map for the area and located half a dozen nearby caches, one of which was of the puzzle variety.  It took me the entire day yesterday--no exaggeration--to solve the damned thing, which started with a simple find-a-word that resulted in a code message that then led to a crazy exercise in image analysis.  The necessary clues turned out to be secretly embedded QR codes.  (Cue extensive headbanging on desk during the discovery process.)   Even when I finally figured out what the code message meant, I had no idea how to do the image stuff and had to figure it all out on the fly.

This is an example of a QR code.  I have no idea what this particular one is for.  

God bless the man, Himself (who is of the definite opinion that my hobbies should not be either addictive or infuriating, as they so often seem to become) spent half an hour this morning figuring out how to download the image manipulation software I needed to solve the problem, entirely against his better judgment!  Or perhaps he just wanted me to finally look up from the computer and stop swearing, who knows.  :)  The good news is that I finally have all the info I need, and will take Thing One with me to find the blessed thing tomorrow morning so I can scratch it off the list once and for all.  Holy hell.  My life would be a lot simpler if I was constitutionally capable of giving up when the going gets tough, but for better or worse I am just not wired that way.  Knowing this, he does his best to help me get through whatever I'm stuck on instead of just telling me to quit!

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Tonight, Himself and I were drinking cava with dinner.  Thing One asked why the carbonation makes it sparkle and where the bubbles come from.  I watched with amusement from across the table as Himself attempted to explain how bubbles get into sparkling wine, stay there, and eventually fade away without using the terms "vapor pressure" or "equilibrium," both of which any self-respecting student of chemistry (as both he and I have been) would ordinarily find very helpful in this situation.  It was tremendously endearing to watch him make a valiant effort to explain principles of high-school chemistry to a rising fifth grader in age-appropriate language!

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I got a Facebook message a few weeks back.  The friend who sent it is a Lt. Colonel in the Air Force, and is going to be doing some training in my general vicinity (far from his home base) before shipping out to Kabul; he wanted to see if we could get together for a visit while he's here.  He was also a college boyfriend of mine, of relatively short duration and long ago, but high intensity at the time.  I haven't seen him in person since I was in grad school, lifetimes ago.  Our breakup was the result of geographic incompatibility, and was tough at the time, but in retrospect, unquestionably for the best: he's now happily married to someone who is a far better fit for him than I ever would have been, and vice versa.  I'd love to see him if we can work out the logistics, but there's no hidden agenda.  And I am inordinately blessed in that Himself is secure enough to be ok with this.

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I met Himself fifteen years ago this month.  I figured out that he was a keeper very soon after I met him, and he continues to prove me right.  I kissed my share of frogs, no doubt, but I eventually found my prince.






  


  

Wednesday In Bullet Points

The Good: Found geocaches hidden on the back of an old train, in a vent hole of a fallen-down chimney, and under a log by the canal.  Pretty cool.

The Bad: Thing Two clocked the hell out of my bad knee with his knee.  Completely accidental, but ouch!!!

The Ugly: I have absolutely no patience left.  Zip, zero, nada.  And there is still a month of the kids' summer vacation left!  Wish me luck...

Big Boys

Thing Two inadvertently crashed into Sean, his soccer coach, the other day while racing a friend and not looking where he was going.  Sean told me about this because he was concerned about Thing Two's head, but my first reaction (how bad of a mom am I?) was to ask if Sean was okay!  He's not a particularly big guy, and Thing Two is about 75 pounds of very dense bone and muscle: not at all what I would want ramming me at speed.  Ouch. 

Thing One had his ten-year well visit this week, and he's now up to 90 pounds, which is frightening. I should add that neither child has an ounce of fat on him and both sink like rocks in the pool: they are just solid walls of boy.  And if those online calculators that predict eventual adult height from boys' heights at age two plus their parents' heights are to be believed, Thing One should top out at 6'4" or so and Thing Two won't be far behind.  Ye gods and little chickens.  Considering how much they eat and how big they are already, my grocery bills will be absolutely through the roof in a few years.

Tonight, I watched Thing Two gallantly shepherd another, much smaller friend through the parking lot at the gym, one arm thrown protectively around her shoulders.  It was very cute, although I knew better than to say that to him.  I was glad to see that he is capable of putting his size to good use when he's actually paying attention to his surroundings: the friend came off a lot better than the soccer coach from their respective encounters with him.  With great size comes great responsibility, or something like that.  A lesson for both of my boys to learn sooner rather than later!

Sweet Relief

Thing Two had his playdate today, the one I wrote about on Friday.

And for all my pre-worry and stressing, it went very well.  We (Thing Two, the friend, and I) bowled two games at the bowling alley, then I gave them some quarters for the video game machines before taking them back to our house.  After a snack, they settled in with the Wii since the thunder outside had taken swimming out of the equation, and were still playing together in peace and harmony when the friend's mom arrived to pick him up.    

We've made some good progress since the early, ugly days of the first playdate attempts.  There was no crying at transition points (time to leave the bowling alley, etc) today.  No inappropriate hugging.  No really silly behavior or voices or unnecessary loudness.  To the extent that his bowling alley etiquette was a bit off, it was indistinguishable from that of his NT friend (and not that bad), so I let it go.  He remembered to ask his friend what he wanted to play at our house, and he said "thank you for coming" at the end with minimal prompting.  Sounds like small potatoes, sure, unless you have a child who struggles socially, at which point any one of these things can pose a major challenge.  For us, these are not things we've been able to take for granted.

The biggest problem we had today was me, which hurts to admit but is the truth.  I need to back off and just let them be, not hover so much trying to make things go well.  This friend in particular has been in Thing Two's class for two years now and seems to like him, idiosyncrasies and all...not sure why I still feel compelled to step in and 'help,' to make explanations or move the conversation along.  They can do it on their own, and I'm afraid that my efforts to ease things along will backfire at some point.  I'm sure I'm not the only special-needs parent who frets about when to step in and when to step away, and I know I don't have the balance right yet.  At any rate, the friend appeared to have fun, I know my son did, and I didn't see any real behavioral flags, which puts this one in the "Success" column as far as I'm concerned.   And I'll keep working on that whole helicoptering thing, even though I really do mean well when I do it.

Mama D: 1, Paranoia: 0.

  

  

           

 

What A Difference Gender Makes

Took Petunia to a birthday party today.  It was held at the birthday-friend's house, a refreshing change from the current trend of ever more extravagant parties held at commercial venues or gyms or pools.  This particular party involved about ten little girls (and one boy) in bathing suits, a kids' wading pool full of soapy water, a giant sheet of plastic serving as a slip n' slide, water balloons, cake, snacks and a piñata.  The children had a blast.

This is the first party I've been to that was essentially all girls--not mixed, as is typical for younger kids, or all boys, as I've become accustomed to with my sons' parties.  What made me think about this was noticing HOW the kids were playing!  Specifically, they were not acting like the boys I know.

Had the partygoers been boys rather than girls:

1) somebody would have been doing cannonballs into the baby pool of soapy water
2) somebody would have broken an arm (leg, neck, etc) landing in some crazy manner on the slip 'n slide
3) two or more somebodys would have been having sliding races on the plastic sheet
4) there would have been a full-on water balloon war at some point
AND
5) the phrase "hey Mom, watch this!" would have been heard multiple times.

At it happened today, everyone played together peacefully and went home injury-free.  It's going to take me some time to get used to girl behavior!