Category — Me, Me, Me, and My World

As my daughter reminded me this morning, Mother’s Day is over.

Yeah, baby! I scored a banner!

Weather-wise, that had to be just about the most fabulous Mother’s Day weekend ever. Loved it. Sure, we’ve crashed back into rainy, chilly reality again, but it was a Monday anyway, right? We’d had a soccer practice and game planned for tonight, both canceled, so it was an unexpectedly relaxing evening.

The girls were excited with their gift-giving. So much so that there was an argument about whose gift would be opened last, because last means the best and the grand finale and all. So I asked them who wanted to give the precious gift of showing their ability to compromise and work well with her sister. On the face of it, neither of them was the answer. So I left the room to hover near Cute W, who was preparing banana-walnut pancakes for me with a side of fresh raspberries in the kitchen. When I returned, J offered up her gift. She had lost rock-paper-scissors. Or so M reported. At that point J disputed whether M had, in fact, presented paper, or if she’d skillfully shifted her scissors hand when she noticed J’s undeniable fist-rock. Whatever.

I opened gift after gift from J, many of which were completed at school. In fact, as I kept opening, M started to look a little irritated. Cute W laughed later that the look on her face was, “What the hell do they frickin’ do all day in first grade? Just make Mom presents!?!” The final gift, a painted pot, was supposed to be a big surprise, which I didn’t realize because an earlier item was a carefully-copied poem on a card about the pot that J had painted. Apparently I was supposed to be fooled into thinking that the referenced pot was the paper picture, when in fact  I just assumed that it was a paper pot. J was a bit irritated. Possibly it was not the poem, but the fact that the bag felt like it held a pot and, frankly, we’ve had this first-grade teacher before.  I managed to smooth it over.

M’s gift presentation was even funnier. They’d made a craft composed of a flower with six petals, each of which contained a hand-written sentiment. As I was opening the gift, M confessed that she’d come up with three truly sincere and heartfelt sentiments, and the other three were not entirely accurate. If she’d been a grown-up she would have just called them bullshit, but since she’s not allowed to use that word, she spoke delicately around the concept that three of her phrases were somewhat contrived and uninspired. In fact, they looked like the teacher had written possible examples on the board. One was especially funny, because it was something like, “I wish that you could be with me all the time.” And M had to hedge with this one, “I like to be with you, but I don’t really want to be with you all the time. I like that you give me time on my own.” Thus in explaining, she unwittingly offers me another actual heartfelt sentiment! Ha! What made it even funnier was that today I stumbled on the rough draft where the teacher had added “all the time” to her note, and I could just imagine M rolling her eyes and thinking, “Okay, that’s totally not true, but it’s not worth arguing with the teacher. Whatever.” In any case, I read the three BS ones, and saved the non-BS items as my grand finale. Absolutely worth it.

Hope you all had a lovely day.

I’m fed up with distorted images of women and girls.

Recently the websites I frequent kept assaulting me with pictures of a mother who’d made some questionable choices. It doesn’t matter which mother, because these news stories are all the same. Just another mother who does something extreme, which becomes sensationalized, it seems, entirely so that the vast majority of us will gasp in real or mock horror, and opine on this particular individual’s lack of parenting skills, sense of propriety, or grip on reality. Another crazy-pants mother spotlighted because of how she feeds, grooms, disciplines, or otherwise raises her kids.  Some cases are horrifying, others comically grotesque, but in all, the women (okay, parents: an occasional nut-job dad appears) are caricatures.

And that’s wrong. Because whatever the headline, these are real people making choices with real consequences. And often they are people who are sincerely parenting as well as they know how, and they’re held up as a punch line, or a symptom, or a cautionary tale. I’m not saying that the mothers in each Shocking Mother Story of the Day are blameless and innocent. But their children are, and they don’t deserve to have family lives raked over the coals to satisfy our collective blood lust. It feels like something primitive, a sort of bitter satisfaction, an appealing reassurance that, “No matter what my flaws are, I’m not that bad.”

I think that this rush to judgement is a reaction to how judged we all feel these days. Because the other side of this distorted female coin is the media-manufactured image of what we are supposed to be: beautiful, successful, slim, crafty, sweet, sexy, patient women. Women who adhere to a standard that is only possible with the help of photographic alterations and endless investments of time and money.

In both cases, media is obliterating the normal. There’s nothing newsworthy about an average mom who loves her kids and makes considered, reasonable parenting choices. The wacky just sucks us in.

But we’ve got to stop allowing ourselves to be spoon-fed media crap. It’s hard not to careen from a story of a mom of a 2-month-old taking her sleek-angled, spiky-heeled bod to a hot yoga class, then read about the latest mother who tied her child to a chair for not eating peas and console ourselves that, sure, we’ll never be her, but at least we’re not her.

Recently I fell into a sort of existential despair when I learned that one of my daughter’s 4th-grade friends loves the show Dance Moms. I’d heard, vaguely, that it was awful. Then I watched an episode–the little girls wearing make-up, the fights and emotional abuse, the sexualized dancing–and thought about what lessons it was teaching young girls who watch it. I’m sure that one could make an argument about the value of working hard, but there are surely better vehicles for learning those lessons, right? Please? Worse is knowing that these are real children living it, and real mothers who sincerely want to make the best choices for their little daughters and have somehow decided that this is it.

We need to refuse to consume the crap that denigrates and debases all of us. We need to stop finding entertainment in real lives that are lampooned in reality shows like Toddlers & Tiaras and Dance Moms. Refuse to accept fiction masquerading as how-tos in beauty and celebrity magazines. Stop fueling the social media frenzy over each Shocking Mother Story of the Day by refusing to click on all of those Bad Mommy Stories, no matter how curiosity-inducing a headline may be.

Because most of us are consuming way too many media-concocted narratives that are poisonous. These stories don’t help us learn about ourselves or make the world a better place. There is beauty, and drama, and power in the average and the everyday. There are plenty of “normal” mothers who do extraordinary things, and there is so much about our normal lives which is extraordinary. If we spent more time recognizing this and reveling in it, all of our lives would be richer.

What disturbs me most is that it feels like things have gone beyond sensationalizing the exceptional and into obliterating the normal. I read recently that some online shopping sites now airbrush out kneecaps when they’re selling skirts and shorts. Because kneecaps are considered unsightly. So pedestrian, really, to want to be able to bend your knees.

Screw that. I like my knees. Hell, I like your knees. And I don’t want to spend my time judging your parenting–or hers either–because life is hard enough without all the judging. And reading this stuff, and watching this stuff, it’s really tough not to judge. So I’m going to do my best to avoid it. Tune it out. I resent the stories about the Bad Moms, or seemingly Bad Moms, just like I resent those pop-up ads that show the sad fat lady shrinking and shrinking until she’s a happy skinny lady. I feel like these messages are trying to shrink all of us, and when we don’t notice it, we consume it mindlessly. We accept it as if it is worthy of our attention.

I don’t think that I’m the only one feeling this way. We so crave the normal and self-affirming that bloggers are giddy over a celebrity choosing parenting priorities over appearances.  We get all excited about Dove’s ad makeover campaign, even if it, like its “real beauty” campaign, is kind of fake, too. We congratulate smart, powerful women for being brave enough to eschew foundation make-up.  The Bloggess, a champion of all that is heartbreaking and hilarious about the everyday and who insists that every one deserves to feel gorgeous and special once in a while, is on the bestseller list, along with several of my favorite, most kick-butt women.

So, what can we do? Notice what we’re reading or watching and think about how it impacts our perceptions of ourselves and others. How is our media diet impacting the health of our souls?  We need to refuse to consume media that creates fun-house spectacles of other women or insane expectations of ourselves.  We need to take a lesson from that 8th grader with her Seventeen petition and speak up to media who aren’t treating us right. We can choose to focus on the perspectives of those moms and other women who offer integrity and insight, whose stories enhance our appreciation of our own journey as parents and as people and provide new perspectives and understanding of our world.

We need to ponder what deserves the gift of our attentiveness, and direct our attention with consciousness and compassion.

This not-super-fit but salty-delicious seaside chair was brought to you by. . . knees.

Walking around my house these days is like a minefield. A Minefield of Love. Everywhere I turn, J is working on another project for Mother’s Day. She is diligent. She is creative. She is prolific.

Sadly, many of these creations will not make the cut. She will labor over a glorious and beautiful message that is two-thirds entirely accurate and one-third invented spelling, and then she will deem it Unacceptable and throw it into the garbage.

That’s not fair.

Doesn’t she understand that the unacceptable, the misspelled, the overly goofy and ardent, are my very favorite kind of gifts? But I won’t get those. I will get something lovely. I will add it to the display.  But what makes the days leading up to Mother’s Day frustrating is that around every corner, J is working on a Special Secret Something, and I’m not allowed to enter the room. Which is adorable the first time and the second time. But eventually, I’d like to walk freely around the house.

Or something is left out. Like this:

You know that this had to be driving me crazy if I’m willing to expose the grubbiness of my stairway to the world. This is a Very Special Item that I’m not permitted to view. Actually, it’s better if I don’t even notice it. This is torture. I am trying to respect J’s desire to keep gifts a secret, but it is very difficult to ignore adorable messages of love from your children. This folded piece of paper spent about two and a half days on the stairs. J kept not moving it, and then when I’d ask her to move it, she’d say that she would later, or she’d freak out that I had noticed it. Ummm. . . it has been sitting there for days, making it difficult not to notice. Actually, it was making me crazy.

There are items like this on the table and on the counter and mixed in with the school papers and I absolutely must not look at any of them. Half of them are things that J’s forgotten about, but I’m not supposed to look at them, because that’s forbidden, and I can’t ask if they should be recycled, because that would imply that they are worthless. It is difficult to tidy any surface around J these days, because she flies into a panic that something will be revealed.

Trying to make good use of all of this loving energy, I offer suggestions, each quickly rejected.

“You know,” I begin, with what I hope is a subtle, musing expression, “A lovely gift to me would be if you spent some extra time tidying up your room or the playroom.” No. J practically rolls her eyes. She could do that any day. It’s not Mother’s Day special. Theoretically, one could spend any day doing such a thing. Okay, she doesn’t say anything about “theoretically,” but it’s clear that that’s Not Special Enough.

“Why don’t you make something for Grandma or Nana Honey?” I  ask when I see art supplies all over the table. M looks up from her book, yawns, and looks back down. J  rejects the idea. She has More Important Work T o Do. Secret Work. She can’t tell me anything more about this.

“A wonderful Mother’s Day idea is to just not drop your belongings all over the house,” I grouse. “It would be so delightful not to have to nag anyone to do anything.” M, standing on top of one of her little sister’s discarded sweaters, folds her arms and says, “You know, it’s not Mother’s Day yet.”

It’s Screen-Free Week at the girls’ school, and for the first time ever, it’s actually a breeze. Although our dinners together have suffered with all of our activities, another happier by-product is that the girls haven’t been watching tv on weekdays at all. Typically, if my kids watch tv during the week, it starts between about 5 & 6:30 pm and continues until I stop them for dinner at 6:30 or 7 pm. It works for me because it keeps them occupied and low-maintenance while I’m cooking. They know that they can’t watch tv until after they’ve finished homework and music practice, and usually when they ask me to watch a show, I tell them that they have to spend ten minutes doing something else (like tidying someplace up, or putting away their laundry) first. It’s a good system, because it makes them pretty efficient. When they were younger, they’d sometimes watch tv in the morning, but only after eating breakfast, getting dressed, brushing teeth, and generally being entirely ready to leave the house. This is pretty much impossible when you leave the house at 7:30 am, so the morning tv long ago died naturally and painlessly. Now nobody thinks to ask about it because we’re so busy in the late afternoon-early evening. And they like busy.

Actually, tonight J was at gymnastics and  I was sitting at the computer (because I am not going screen-free. I do it occasionally, but it requires some serious planning). Suddenly M was hovering near me, looking over my shoulder, and listlessly moving her soccer ball around. I realized her problem: there’s been a change to her schedule, and in the past, M was always at soccer practice on Tuesday nights. So we went outside and kicked the ball around. Which is a big deal, because generally she considers me unworthy of her playing time, since I have zero soccer skills. We had an excellent time, even if she is a dirty, shirt-grabbing cheater and I only know how to kick in one direction, which is away. After playing, we took another one of our walks.

Last night, J and I did Zumba again, and she was so cute: she even picked out a sparkly, Zumba-looking shirt to wear. Afterwards we went to the best soccer game we’ve watched in weeks. It was the first outdoor game where we weren’t freezing our butts off, both teams had some amazingly great and comically awful plays, our team won, but only by two points, so it was still interesting for everyone and not overly demoralizing for the other team, and M scored a goal. On the way home we were in separate cars (because J and I had zoomed over from Zumba), and Cute W managed to get in front of the girls and me. For the rest of the drive they kept urging me to pass unsafely, run into him, or do something else hazardous to assert our domination. I staunchly refused, turned up the music, and declared us the fun car. We were just behind him pulling into the driveway, so I stopped short and yelled to the girls, “Quick! GO! Beat him to the door!” And they popped out, shrieking wildly, and ran for it. Meanwhile I had to park, and with J’s scooter infringing on my parking turf,  I eased ever-so-slowly into the garage. I didn’t realize that I was supposed to beat Cute W, too. So when I finally came out of the garage, I saw J just inside the house guarding the door and M tackling Cute W on our back steps, trying to keep him from reaching the door (here’s a visual of the back steps). I vaulted over the shoulder-high railing beyond the stairway scrum and entered. At which point Cute W, no doubt for the good of everyone’s mood, conceded defeat while we girls high-fived each other. Which, if you include the ride, pretty much made the soccer game the Best Game Ever.

Tonight while Cute W and I were eating dinner at a table that hadn’t been cleared due to all of our activities and haphazard eating schedule, I noticed a little art project that M had been working on:

You can’t see it well, but the circular stickers on the top spell out soccer, with two quotations that M had added that she hears from her coach all the time: “Be a team. Trust your teamwork together.” and “You’ll never score if you don’t shoot.”

I nudged Cute W and passed it to him silently for his inspection. Which, if it didn’t make his day, it totally should have. Because of course the quotes were from Coach Cute W.

I’m getting fed up with being sensible. My brain is creating intelligible, perfectly reasonable statements, but by the time they flow out of my mouth all anyone can hear is the “Wawhn-wawhn-wah-wah-Wonk” of that teacher from the Peanuts cartoons. It’s seriously frustrating.

Okay, so it’s almost May, and the sky is blue with puffy white clouds, but if you are heading to the barren flat lands which are our town soccer fields in the evening, you may as well just dress for the tundra. The wind is whistling. The sky switches to storm clouds before halftime. And for such a seemingly dry season, the puddles are epic. Denying any of this only causes misery.

Yet deny it they do. M dresses in only her short-sleeve t-shirt for the 7 pm game tonight. When I give Cute W an extra long-sleeve shirt to bring along, her eyes roll like she’s a mare who’s been over-whipped on a Little House on the Prairie episode. Moments later I see J’s sneakers and suggest the rain boots and she protests like I’ve just told her that her shoe choice makes her a loathsome and worthless human being.

I retreat, muttering that it doesn’t really matter, I don’t care what they wear to the game.

Later, I am careful not to look too smug when M pulls on the fleece that I brought along.

Instead, I remind myself, again, of a conversation M and I had last week. Last Friday was the Girls Scouts’ Father-Daughter Dance, and M left the house wearing jeans shorts and a t-shirt. I prevailed upon her to allow me to stow a sundress in the car, just in case. As soon as they saw they saw the arrivals in the parking lot, Cute W reported, M changed in the car.

“Well,” M put in, “There was one girl who was wearing shorts at the dance.”

“And they said it was okay to wear shorts, but it’s nice to have a choice,” I said. “Did she seem like she was happy with the shorts?”

M laughed. “No way. She looked pretty uncomfortable. I felt kind of sorry for her. She doesn’t have you for a mom.”

I used to read articles in parenting magazines which urged us to try our best to have dinner together as a family at least once or twice a week and I totally rolled my eyes. I’d think: talk about a low bar! What the heck do they think everyone is doing? Is everyone driving through to get fast food and eat in the car? All of this was followed, of course, by my own smug satisfaction. Because we almost always eat dinner together as a family. Sure, manners could use a little work (why does my 9-year-old always try to use her fingers instead of a fork?) and the conversation is not always super-intellectual (Cute W keeps saying that we should plan discussions about current events or the arts, but so far, planned talks. . .  are all talk). But we eat decent meals at a decent hour and everybody clears the table together.

Or, that’s how it used to be. Until lately.

Now that we’ve reached the school-age years, things have gone to hell in a hand-basket.

I vaguely remember a story–I think it was from Dr. Sears–about a parent who was so pleased that his children never colored or wrote on the walls. He assumed that this was due to excellent  parenting for years until a baby came along and he realized that the only reason why the walls had been clean before was because unlike the new baby, his elder children weren’t artists. I have years ahead for meeting my parental comeuppances in one form or another (for example, shortly after I posted about how I can handle anything with a decent night’s sleep and a shower, there’s this post on a mom’s anxiety about her very good daughter’s short shorts, and I know that it’s just a matter of time–HT sistermama).

So, the latest comeuppance? Family dinner.

On an unscheduled, generally organized day, the family will eat together at 6:30 or 6:45 pm and the girls will head upstairs to brush teeth and put on PJs by about 7:30 or 7:45 pm.

That hasn’t been happening lately.

On Monday, I brought J with me to my 5:30 pm Zumba class. Usually I’d leave the girls alone, knowing that Cute W would be arriving home shortly, but M had soccer practice, and I didn’t want to leave J by herself. Then practice was cancelled, but J was all excited about Zumba, so she came along, anyway. I thought that she was just going to watch, but apparently she participated and did quite well. I say “apparently” because, like anyone at their first Zumba class, she started out a bit nervous. I was hovering like a hen and annoying her, so she stood behind me and waved me off whenever I’d turn around to check on her. By the end of the class, three women had asked me if she took dance lessons  and the teacher called her “Zumba Queen” and said she was better than me. Shocking, because I’m fabulous. Actually, there aren’t any mirrors in the class, which allows me to falsely  assume that I’m fabulous, making it more fun. J loved Zumba, and she’s excited to go back next week for what is sadly my last class.

I fed both girls at 5 pm, then I quickly ate at about 6:40 pm, before J and I rushed off to meet Cute W and M at their 7 pm soccer game (yep, he’s coaching again). While J and I were Zumba-ing, Cute W ate before heading to the soccer fields for a pre-game warm-up.  I took advantage of the cold, wet weather to make one last batch of chicken chowder for the season, so that was an easy self-serve meal.

On Tuesday, M had a soccer game at 6 pm, half an hour away, and J had to be dropped off at gymnastics at 6:20 pm. For a while I’d had plans of dropping J and rushing over to watch soccer, but Cute W made me realize that this was a gas-guzzling exercise in folly. Again, the girls got an early 5 pm dinner (burritos), and this time Cute W had a post-soccer game meal at 7:30 pm. Meanwhile, I foolishly thought I could sneak in a meal at home between dropping M at her friend’s for a ride (and yes, I was late enough that the friend’s mom already had the family loaded in her car when I dropped M) and taking J to gymnastics at Cartwheels. I wouldn’t get home until 8:15 pm, so I packed myself a dinner and had a tragic car picnic:

Jason, the nice guy at Cartwheels, assured me that I could eat inside while watching class, but I didn’t want to stink the joint up. Not only because it’s rude, but because it’s a bunch of mamas I don’t know, and I don’t want to be “the stinky dinner lady.” Perhaps that is merely a manifestation of my general social awkwardness, but I found more serenity in my car.

Tonight W is coaching another soccer game for M, then he’s off to play his own game, so it’s another early dinner followed by a scramble to the (unbelievably cold and windy) soccer fields.

Fortunately, this rec soccer season is only four weeks, and tomorrow evening we have nothing planned at all.

But I keep wondering how the heck parents of more children manage all of this, and yes, I pine for an elusive “Olden Days” when all the kids would just go and play in a vacant lot somewhere while the parents had pre-dinner cocktails. I wish that we spent less time organizing and schlepping and more time relaxing. I’d love to see more active kids playing pick-up games in the neighborhood, so I could just yell out the front door at 6:45 pm for everyone to come in to dinner.

I lost it a bit yesterday.

I’ve got a soda problem. I just love it. And I know it’s terrible. It’s chemicals in a can. It’s got caffeine, and I’m ridiculously sensitive to caffeine–if I have two Coke Zeros, then I’m screwed, sleep-wise. So I’m intermittently abstaining from soda, trying to quit, or off the wagon completely in what appears to be an endless cycle. If I could keep it to one or two cans a week, that would be acceptable, but it’s tough. Right now I’m once again in cold-turkey mode.

This time, I’m augmenting my #1 favorite beverage–tap water–with the occasional chai iced tea and club soda. Drinking club soda at my sister’s reminded me that I like club soda much more than seltzer. Which is a shame, because it seems very similar except that it’s got some added sodium and it tends to be less conveniently available.  Also, the bottles, while cute, seem shockingly wasteful to me, yet I can’t commit to the big plastic bottles because I wouldn’t drink enough before they go flat. You know that I’m cheap. So I went out and bought myself some cute little bottles of club soda, but I perversely feel like they are a special treat.

Meanwhile, my kids aren’t allowed to drink soda. Or, at least, not under everyday conditions. Usually, we try to just act neutral and model good behavior when it comes to dietary choices, like my mentor Ellyn Satter says. But this doesn’t work, because Cute W and I love soda, and we hate how much we love soda. The girls can have a soda at parties, they’re usually allowed up to one soda per day on vacations, and sometimes at the movies or a restaurant. They rarely finish the sodas, like that time we bought them on our “live”-blogging car trip.

Really, they just like the idea of soda. Because it is forbidden at their house, it is pure animal instinct that they must ask for it repeatedly and accept it whenever it’s offered. Dogs have to pee everywhere. Seagulls must pester you if you try to picnic on the beach. And my children must beg for soda. We know (and if we didn’t, Ellyn Satter would tell us) we’ve created this monster. Still, it’s monstrous.

So, yesterday, M asked to try a club soda. She doesn’t like club soda. Both girls have tried club soda and seltzer, and they don’t like either one of them. Still, its soda-like effervescence called to her, and it seemed better to let her try so that she’d just remember that she didn’t like it. So I repressed a sigh and consented.

In opening the bottle, M sprayed club soda all over the floor. Okay. A rookie mistake. Then, as she started to lift the bottle to her lips, I suggested, “You know, it would be better with some ice. Room temperature probably won’t taste too good.” M ignored me and took a sip. And then, with great drama, she ran past the sink and to the nearest door, where she spat out her small taste of club soda. But she was determined, and  J was now intrigued and asking for a taste. I pulled out the ice cube tray and two glasses. M ignored me and the glass, instead pressing an ice cube at the top of the bottle, because the bottle is cute.  This drove me slightly crazy, because the ice cube was clearly too large for the mouth of the bottle. But I restrained myself admirably.

Finally, M gave up and poured some club soda over the glass with ice, setting down the half-full bottle as the (small) glass fizzed to the rim. I picked up the bottle in order to pour the other half into an ice-filled glass for J. As I lifted the bottle from the table, M grabbed it by the bottom. Because she did not want to share.

She did not want to share the bottle of the stuff that she had, moments ago, run moaning to the door to spit out.

I was forced to use italics so that we’re clear on how freaking ridiculous she was being.

Alas. I chose to descend to her level.

This is when I said, “Let go.” And she ignored me. Since she was tiny, M has done this. She digs in her heels, driving me from somewhat sympathetic to mildly annoyed to extremely irritated to ballistic. She was the toddler who ran screaming from time-out until I would put her into her room and close the door and hang onto the knob from the outside for her own protection. Usually it’s over something stupid. Like half a bottle of club soda. So we played tug of war with the bottle while I said, “Let go-let go-let go!” with a steadily rising voice, much like Bill Cosby with his “Come here-come here-come here” routine (which, if you don’t know this, you simply must click over and watch a bit–funny, too, because apparently he has child/soda issues, as well).

I’m not proud of this. Here’s yet another way in which I am utterly screwed as a parent. I hardly ever yell. You would think that my children would appreciate that, especially when you can hear parents say all sorts of nasty stuff in all sorts of mean voices just at the grocery store. Oh, no. Instead, I have raised children who are deeply sensitive to the slightest change in tone of my voice. So when I raise my voice into loud talking, they are appalled, wounded, aggrieved. And I feel like CrapMom.

At approximately the fifth “Let go,” M wisely chose to let go, and I proceeded to pour the other half of the club soda into J’s half-filled glass. At this point, M, emotionally-wounded-by-loud-talking-Mommy, exited the house. Whether it was merely to avoid hanging around with me or, as I suspect, in order to try one more sip of the cold club soda and then feel free to pour it into the closest shrubbery while I wasn’t looking, I don’t know. What I do know is that we have a no-walking-outside-with-glass-or-ceramics policy that I had not yet reviewed for the spring season. Still, you’d think my 9-year-old would remember this. But instead of following her and insisting that she re-pour the club soda into plastic, I just thanked my lucky stars that she was out of the damn house.

Then I turned to J, who was attempting to dislodge additional ice cubes from the empty ice cube tray. “Two ice cubes should be plenty to make it cold enough,” I advised. “If you want it colder, you can stir it around.” She wanted it colder, of course, because she does not like club soda. She thought that if it were colder, she might actually like it. She sat for a minute, looked at me furtively, then got up and walked over to our counter-top water tank to add some water to the club soda to make it more palatable.

At which point I lost it again. “Stop right there! If you want to add water, it’s because you don’t like the club soda! Give me your club soda and I will drink it for you, because I actually like the club soda just the way it is! And I actually have to go to the store and pay money to buy the club soda. Water is free! So, if you don’t like the club soda, don’t drink the club soda! Drink the delicious, readily-available, completely free water!!!” All of which I said in my very loud talking voice.

She looked like she might burst into tears. And I was overcome with remorse. “No, J, it doesn’t matter. Add water if you want. Just don’t take more if you don’t like it. Can you see how I would find this annoying?”

“Never mind,” she sniffed. “I don’t want it anymore.” And she took her glass of club soda and fled the room.

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Last night I tried to write this post and it felt too unbelievably tedious to write. Because it was so unbelievably tedious to experience.  But I know that some of you are entertained my most most epic parenting fails, so. . .VOILÀ.

And it gets even better. The girls were awake this morning before either of us, and when he came downstairs, Cute W discovered a half-full bottle of club soda sitting on the kitchen table. He asked, and neither of the girls ‘fessed up.

So, what about you guys? Do you have food or soda battles? Do you think I should never mention club soda again, forbid it and lock my club sodas in a liquor cabinet, or give up and have us all drink soda to our heart’s content?

We enjoyed our first completely unscheduled Saturday in months. The gorgeous weather was a bonus.

Cute W spent much of the day staining a desk that his dad made for him.

Staining furniture has got to be on the Cute W’s top ten list for things that make him most tense, ever. For part of the time I stood next to him, catching errant drips with a rag, and listened to him moan, mutter, and curse. This was particularly amusing to me, because it seems like a pretty Zen process. That’s largely because he doesn’t trust me to do it myself, so I don’t have primary responsibility. You might think I’m kidding, but he truly would not let me do it. Anyway, I asked, “What is it about staining that stresses you out so much?” And he answered, “Because everything is a potential mistake.”

Ah, yes. So then it struck me as a perfect metaphor for parenthood. We’re walking around this desk, fussing over the imperfections and touching up what we can and fretting. Because it’s a race against time: if we don’t fix something quickly, it will become a permanent flaw. Cute W is afraid that there will be a thick, ugly drip that he’ll see every time he sits down at his computer desk for years to come. A constant reminder of a momentary lack of competence. Just like parenting, when we encounter bad habits or annoying phases and wonder, is this something that will pass, or is it an indication of a permanent character defect? A defect which is no doubt due to our own parenting incompetence, something that we could have prevented if only we’d been more vigilant? I was thinking all of this while Cute W stained and I wiped drips and we both fretted over the mottled surface.

Then J came along and said, “Wow! That looks wonderful! You guys are doing a great job!”

When we weren’t staining, we were walking. Yesterday, I took the girls to visit my sister and her family in Vermont. When we returned, the weather was gorgeous and I desperately needed to get off my butt. J was at gymnastics, so M and I took a walk. Strangely, this was a revelation. When the girls were in the Baby Bjorn-and-stroller stage, I walked with them often. But we haven’t taken too many random strolls lately. M gushed, “We never just walk without going somewhere. We bike around, or we walk to somewhere, but we never just walk around.” She decided that we should walk far.

When we returned home, we mapped our walk to find out how far we’d walked, and then we logged our time and miles.

So, today, M was eager for another walk. First, J came along. This was a bit of a flop. J didn’t walk fast enough for M, and M wanted to walk farther than J. There was drama and sorrow. We ended the threesome walk, then M and I headed back out.

By the end, M was tired. I asked if I could take a picture for the blog, and she consented.

Then she began to collapse for the camera.

We were both laughing, because we were passing by a neighbor’s house, and they’re always posting photos on Facebook of the whole family climbing mountains. I jokingly narrated the contrasting families’ adventures, “Here’s so-and-so on mile 8 of our trek at 320 feet, still looking good! . . . “Here’s M after a walk around the neighborhood. We borrowed a stretcher for the final block of our stroll.”

So, I’m hoping we stick with this new mother-daughter ritual. J was tired today, but I suggested that we take a one-on-one walk soon. At this rate I might need to get a decent pair of sneakers.

Oh, hey! Stay tuned for another circus giveaway coming up soon!

I don’t quite know where the day went. That’s what it’s like when the kids are home.

Well, first, it’s not entirely true. In the morning, we visited an orthodontist. Little J has crowded teeth, and we were hoping that today’s second opinion would echo the first opinion so that we’d just know what to do. Dr. First said pull 4 teeth and see how it goes.  Which sounded awesome to us, because we love to procrastinate. Actually, by “us” I mean Cute W and me. J thought that this was a bad idea. In fact, we walked out of the office and she told me, “I feel terrified.” It took quite a bit of coaxing to convince her that it wouldn’t feel all that different from getting a cavity filled. What, you don’t agree? Well. . . just zip it, okay? We don’t need to know.

I miss those straight baby teeth.

This morning, Dr. Second was in favor of keeping the teeth and going straight to some braces. He argued convincingly that while extraction works for some, in J’s case, the braces approach would lead to greater “aesthetic success.” This term had Cute W and I snickering immediately. Because, I’m sorry. That’s just funny. I’m already figuring that this will become a new phrase for us, like when we’re out running errands and I’ll lean over to Cute W and say, “Ouch! Aesthetic failure in aisle 5!” Which is wrong. And bad karma. But sometimes it’s difficult to hold back.

The point is, we left the office and had a five-minute conversation about just how confused we were before splitting up for the day. Cute W arrived home from the office with a print-out of approximately 70-odd pages of someone’s thesis on the timing of tooth extractions that he’d Googled . He pronounced it, “Interesting, but inconclusive.” After a swift check of the introduction and conclusion, I’ll agree only to the latter portion of that statement.

Meanwhile I’d ignored Google, except to locate, and make an appointment with, Dr. Third. Looking forward to it. Oh, wait! But the best part is that I hadn’t yet broken it to J that we’d set up a third appointment, so she found out when Cute W was chatting to his mother on speaker phone tonight, and then Grandma started talking on. . . and on. . . about pulling teeth while J’s face collapsed in much the same way that Dr. Second predicts will happen if we choose to extract her teeth. So that was a good time.

The girls were playing together nicely for quite a while this morning and early afternoon, so I was lulled into complacently believing that I could stop puttering (laundry, dishes, etc.) and do more brain-involved computer work. Unfortunately, my psychic children sensed that I had decided to blow off activity for the day, so they reported to the computer to plead for a fun outing. Or, really, any outing. By this time it was about 1:45 pm, and J had evening gymnastics, so I just looked at them, slightly stunned and saddened that my opportunity for productivity had slipped through my fingers. Seeing my slack-and-stumped face, M grouched, “Don’t you, like, run a website about fun stuff to do or something?”

Dammit. Apparently I do. But the girls didn’t realize that organized activities tend to be at 10 am or 1 pm but definitely not, say 2:30 pm, which would have worked for us. Plus we had limited time. We ended up feeding and playing with the neighbors’ pets, visiting the library, and then going for a bike ride.

The good news is that J is finally getting used to her bigger bike, which she began resisting as too scary approximately forty minutes after begging for it please-please-please and five minutes after the credit card slip was signed. So that’s progress. Beyond that, it’s difficult to point to much that was accomplished. I read some more Harry Potter to J. I cut apart M’s wrists after J duct-taped them together (in fairness, M did it to J first). M and I took a walk and briefly kept our legs perfectly synchronized, left/right, as I realized that soon I’ll be able to rest my chin comfortably on the top of her head. Some days, noticing that the kids are still here and growing is the all the accomplishment that a Mama can hope for.

Besides, there’s always tomorrow.

First, I keep getting links for Easter fun. So here are a few:

• Deb’s Easter Egg Hunt Tips for Parties at KidsOutAndAbout.com
• Childhood 101′s Easter Egg Hunt ideas for building literacy
• and their Playopedia Picks Eggy Fun for Easter
• The Stir’s 10 Fun and Easy Easter Crafts for Kids.

The other day, I was pondering my school letters for next year. At our elementary school, some parents choose to write a letter about their child in an attempt to sway teacher assignments. Really, I don’t think too many families do it. In fact, I’ve never written a letter for M. Last year I wrote one for J partly at the suggestion of her teachers, because her possible teacher assignments included a wonderful teacher whom M had had and another teacher who is a bit harsh and brusque.

The letter thing is a little nutty. We aren’t permitted to name teachers, so there’s a rather well-established code called “learning style.” For the first graders, instead of naming teachers A, B, or C, parents tend to say that they believe their child would flourish with “discipline and structure,” with “a warm environment with some structure,” or with “plenty of freedom and warmth.” The quotations aren’t exact, but I think most parents at our school would be able to match those up fairly well with the three first grade teachers. I’ve even had school staff advise me on the code to avoid a particular teacher: “I believe strongly that teachers should conform to our school’s homework guidelines.” Anyway, the whole set-up is goofy, but I don’t really have a better method to suggest. Parents want input, but they can’t be in charge of these assignments. Parents don’t know the teachers, the other kids, and the curricula as well as the folks making the assignments. And our kids can act quite differently at school than at home, so if our kids are the one area in which parents claim expertise, I don’t even know if that‘s true.

This year, we received a special note from the principal in which she once again said what we couldn’t say, like teachers’ names, and threw in some new ones including no mention of  “learning style” and no requests to avoid combination classes. One friend summed it up something like, “in other words, please don’t write.” But of course it’s precisely this year’s uncertainty, including teachers getting reassigned all over the place and a possible combination class of 1st and 2nd graders, that made me feel like I had to write something for each of them. For M, I told the principal about her miserable experience with a math teacher on the off chance that the teacher would be reassigned to 5th grade. For J, I explained that J still has a complex about being “too old” for first grade. She turned 7 on October 1st. I just went back searching for a post of being a Red Shirter and I realized that I never wrote one–how is that possible? Anyway, if a stranger asks her what grade she’s in, she’ll still sometimes answer, “I should be in 2nd grade, but I’m only in 1st grade.” It makes me crazy.

So I wrote those letters, and then I remembered another communication I had. The 4th graders have been doing practice tests for their upcoming state tests a lot. And we’ve been getting all sorts of reminders about the test dates, and the importance of plenty of sleep and a healthy breakfast. Plus, M’s been doing great on the practice tests. Comments like, “Wonderful!!!” So over dinner recently, I joked that we should tell her teacher that M was going to be absent. I was only kidding, of course, but Cute W and M kept saying, “Oh, we have to!”

We’ve been known to miss school for unacceptable reasons. We went to Disney World, we’ve gone skiing. I feel some guilt over it, but M’s teacher has always been so kind. We’ll send her an email, and she’ll reply with a perky, “Have fun! Wish I could come, too!” So the other day I sent an email:

M won’t be in school on Tuesday, April 17th or Wednesday, April 18th because we have an important rollerskating outing we’re planning as a family.

I was hoping that “an important rollerskating outing” would be sufficiently ridiculously to make her re-read it and realize it was a joke, but I was underestimating the sort of ridiculousness that teachers encounter. Instead, she replied with a polite and diplomatic reminder that those dates were state testing dates. I felt so bad. I sent her a reply right away ‘fessing up, apologizing, and promising that I’d buy some more #2 pencils. She replied quick with all caps and a declaration of war. So now I’m a little scared. She’s basically got custody of my children for hours every day. That’s a lot of power.

Finally, I stumbled on my first letter to a school when I went to write my elementary school letters. I usually just open a previous letter so that the format and address are already there. I accidentally clicked the document from long ago, when we withdrew M from daycare. I attempted to go back to work shortly after M turned one, and it didn’t work out too well. But the brief letter I sent made me laugh:

Dear Ms. Daycare Director:

Our daughter, M, will be leaving Daycare in order to pursue her first love:  hanging out with Mommy full time.  Her last day will be Thursday, December 4^th

For those keeping score, little J got started a month later and was born the following October. I figured that if I was going to Mommy full time, I may as well get rolling on a sibling.