Gobsmacked

Didn't see that one coming, that's for sure.

More sad that I can begin to express that your demons won.  Rest in peace, Robin Williams.

Still My Little Boy

Each summer, my husband spends one weekday doing something fun with each child alone.  Friday was Petunia's day, and Thing Two is still at his grandparents' (to my everlasting guilt, the break from constant arguing has been welcome) so it was just me and Thing One that afternoon.  I had to do a little furniture shopping, so I picked him up after golf camp and we looked at a bunch of sofas, then grabbed some caches and frozen yogurt together as a reward for our diligence.

As luck would have it, there was a Hooters across the parking lot from the frozen yogurt place, and Thing One asked about it.  I try to answer his questions honestly, so I explained that "hooters" is a slang term for breasts and that this is a restaurant where the servers are women who wear tight and revealing clothing.  Without missing a beat, and in dead seriousness, he replied, "What's the point of that??"

Guess I don't have to worry about him and girls for a while yet!

Got A Live One Here

Juggling a little more than usual this week of summer vacation: Thing One has golf camp, Petunia has soccer camp, and Thing Two has the week off (he left this morning for a few days at his grandparents' house, so he's been with me the past two days.)  Petunia's soccer camp is only for girls and is run by the head coach of the girls' soccer team at the high school our kids will attend, who by coincidence happens to be a friend and neighbor of mine although Petunia does not know her well.  At a month shy of 7, Petunia is by far the youngest girl attending this year--there is one other girl who just turned 8 and the others range in age from 10-16.

At any rate, I arrived a bit early for pickup today and watched Petunia trot over to the head coach and have a conversation with her after the camp dismissed.  Shortly afterward, the coach came up to me, laughing, and asked if I put her up to it.  "Put her up to what?" I asked, half-fearing the response.

My little pipsqueak of a six year-old, unprompted, had walked up to the coach, asked if she could speak to her for a moment (exact quote) and then said "You've been watching me play for three days now.  Can you tell me what I need to work on at home to get better?"  (The coach thought either Himself or I had told her to do that, which we hadn't.)  The kicker was the final statement: "I know I'm the littlest one here, so I need the most help.  Can you help me?"

I have to give the kid credit: she has an awful lot of guts and determination for a very small person!  Proud mama here.

  




  

Word

I envy those who can let well enough (or good enough) alone. I am not that woman. Damn, sometimes being Type A sucks rocks!

Taking Control Of What I Can Control

Last weekend I spent a great deal of time clearing junk out of our office and throwing it away.  The net result didn't look all that different, but at least I felt better afterward.  This weekend I cleared out my closet, drawers and shoes...there are now two bags of trash and three of clothes to donate in my front hall.  Himself walked into our room mid-cleaning frenzy today and asked me if I was nesting!  (For the record, the answer is no.)  I gave him a dirty look.

There's only so much dirt and disorder and confusion I can handle, and by this point in the summer I am right up to my limit.  What I clean is immediately dirtied, what I tidy is immediately strewn with kid detritus and dog hair....AAAGGGHH.  I think that if my husband were to take the kids out of town for any period of time right now, the first thing I would do would be to clean everything so I could then enjoy a clean and tidy house in peace until they came back.  This sort of thing is why mothers do a happy dance at the bus stop on the first day of school!

All Survived And It Is The End Of An Era

Last night was the party for Thing One's birthday.  Eight eleven year-old boys were here for most of the evening, and five slept over (mercifully, for one reason or another three were picked up by parents before bedtime.)

This will be the last time we do this, really.  I know we say that every year, but this year we MEAN it, dammit.  And it wasn't that they were misbehaving, because they weren't--they are good kids and really have remarkably good manners as a group--but that is just an *awful* lot of preteen boys to have running around one house and yard.  Especially when there are also two younger siblings around, one of whom has to be picked up and dropped off from a friend's party the same evening as well.

After the pizza and cake, the manhunt and basketball and swimming and general mayhem, the boys were bundled off down to the basement with their handheld games of choice, sleeping bags and pillows and asked to please keep the noise to a minimum.  We've given up on hoping that they actually sleep, although some of them do on occasion--our baseline requirement is merely that they let US sleep.  Himself was scheduled to run 17 miles with a friend at 6 this morning and really was not in the mood to be kept up all night--he told the boys that anyone who kept him awake was going to be dragged out of bed and taken running at 5:30!  Amazingly, we went to bed at midnight and didn't hear a single peep before Himself's alarm went off.  :)

One boy had a stomachache first thing this morning.  I called his mom, who came over immediately, but of course the kid was feeling better by the time his mom arrived and ended up staying.  After Wii and pancakes, the kids were collected by their parents, and after they left I found a pillow, two pairs of really grubby, disgusting boy-socks and a bathing suit left behind!  Par for the course.  Thing One has been a zombie for most of the day, but he had fun with his buddies and that was the point of the exercise.

And next year, NEXT YEAR, there will be a party somewhere other than my house that does not involve sleeping over!        

I Haven't Bought Clothes For My Daughter In Years

Beyond underwear, soccer gear and the odd pair of shoes, anyway.  Why?

Each of the white bags you see is a standard 13-gallon kitchen trash bag.   There are six of these, full,  on the bottom of this pile.  Sprawled across the top are four more of these bags, each containing multiple dresses, garment-bag style.  And the clothes in these bags?  All hand-me-downs for Petunia.  Better than Christmas as far as she's concerned.  

One of my best friends has two daughters who are the same ages as my sons.  These girls are dressed like fashion plates all the time, in an age-appropriate, non-skanky sort of way.  The dresses have matching hairbands and shoes; even the play clothes come in sets.  And each time the younger girl grows and the mother cleans out her closet, a pile like this appears in my front hallway!

The scary thing is that this is probably all one size of clothing; I haven't had a chance to look yet (see my earlier post about the boy madness currently going on in my house.)  The sheer size of the pile just boggles my mind.  My boys have a fair amount of clothing, and my younger son more than the elder because he has Thing One's hand-me-downs plus whatever he got new, but what comes out of my friend's younger daughter's closet could comfortably clothe quadruplets, I swear it.  It's certainly more than my one little girl needs, so I sort and share.  And even what I do keep is passed along again in turn when Petunia outgrows it, from me to one friend's daughter and from her to another younger girl.

These clothes get a lot of use and we are but one link in a long chain; that's the only thing keeping me from feeling ridiculous guilt about overconsumption and waste when I look in Petunia's closet.  I don't have to buy any of it...I can't even imagine how much all of that cost new.  But the best part??  I didn't have to be the one trying to find preteen clothes for tall, long-legged girls that don't make them look like streetwalkers!  My friend is happy to give me the things her daughters outgrow, but she has jokingly said on more than one occasion that I should have to experience the frustration she feels while shopping for her daughters as the 'price' of the hand-me-downs.  :)