I have endless guilt when it comes to my children. ENDLESS. I have guilt over the genetic things I either know or fear they've inherited from me or their dad. I'm not even talking about deadly disease sorts of things---I feel guilty that Chickadee's needed glasses since she was a toddler or that Monkey needed a palate expander and braces. I have guilt over every difficulty they ever experience, whether it involves me or not. I feel guilty when they're mad or sad or frustrated, because if I was a GOOD mother, I'd be able to fix it. I still---coming up on six years later---have guilt about...
Yesterday afternoon didn't start out well; once again, my kids had a substitute bus driver. Normally, we're the first stop on the route, but when there's a sub, they always ends up doing the route backwards and we become the last stop. This results in the kids getting home a full hour later than usual. And in me calling the bus garage to try to explain---AGAIN---why it is really not okay with me that every so often the bus simply DISAPPEARS with no warning or explanation, and I'm supposed to use my powers of ESP to figure out that everything is fine, my children are merely being UNEXPECTEDLY...
Goodness, you're all awfully good at this complimenting thing. Many of you get an A+ in suck-up-itude, and so many nice things were said it made me feel like a complete impostor. Here I thought I was inviting y'all to say something goofy, and then people started busting out with actual, KIND, LOVELY things to say. STOP IT. Needless to say, if forced to pick just one glowing compliment from amongst the 200+ as the book winner, I would need to go to some sort of random method or yank out all my hair, trying to figure out who was the NICEST and BESTEST and SWEETEST TO SMALL ANIMALS. So instead...
I usually save the contests for that other little blog o' mine, but today I'm going to do one here. Just because. It's at the end of this post. OH, THE SUSPENSE! Don't hurt yourself! It has long been our dinner tradition to go around the table and have each family member share the best and worst parts of his or her day. It's not only a nice way to reconnect after the hubbub of daily life, but it provides a much-needed break from telling the kids to stop bickering or exhorting them to actually eat some of their food. Of course, some days it's easier than others to come up with something to...
Hey, guess what! Remember about a year ago when Monkey won an award, and we went to a very long ceremony, and I realized that I have an irrevocable urge to shout "YOU DAMN KIDS GET OFFA MY LAWN" at elementary schoolers who have bigger boobs than I do? Wasn't that awesome? We liked it all SO much, we went back again and did the whole shebang a second time when Chickadee won. It was pretty much the same. This year I've sort of been living in dread of such things, because it turns out that as proud as I am when the kids do good things, I still don't particularly like sitting through long...
One of my friends is pregnant. Actually; wait. THREE of my friends are pregnant right now, but only one in-town friend, who I have the advantage of being able to bother daily. I mean, I doubt she's having a baby just to make ME happy, or anything, but I think it was awfully nice of her, anyway. Smooshy baby cheeks! Yummy baby knees! I can hardly wait! (And in the meantime: Vicarious shopping! Pregnancy jokes! Better-you-than-me comments! She sure is lucky to have me as a friend, I tell you what!) I have thus far really been enjoying my peek into impending-third-child-dom. For example, her...
Wasn't I just waxing nostalgic about how I miss the helpless baby days, but saying how great it is now that the kids can do lots of things themselves? I think I was. Which is tantamount to holding a sign up to the universe and inviting it to please come show me the error of my ways, preferably in the most humbling way possible. Ah, yes. There is nothing that says PRECARIOUS CUSP BETWEEN BABYHOOD AND SELFDOM like the tween years, and nothing that says WELCOME TO PURGATORY like that tween with a new pair of contact lenses. You do remember that Chickadee was all jazzed to try contacts, right?...
I was wasting time on Facebook earlier today when I really should've been working (and not just in a "gosh, I should probably be working" kind of way, but in a "OH MY HOLY HELL I HAVE A DEADLINE AND I'M NOT DONE AND THE ONLY CURE FOR THIS PARALYSIS IS MORE SCRAMBLE!" kind of way), and ---like everyone else in the world---I've been reconnecting with people I haven't seen since childhood, and I came across someone's picture of her toddler and commented on it that I miss toddler bellies. Because I do. There is nothing quite like the proud pot-belly of a toddler. My lips twitch with the urge to...
I love how many of you remember your own Spelling Bee come-to-Jesus moment. And I even love how many of you were so concerned that I was going to use my kid to make a statement, to buck the law, man, like I regularly trot around using my offspring as body armor as necessary. Heh. Sometimes I vent, people. Like when I'm given two days to come up with an outfit because the school said it was optional-compulsory-required-justkidding! We found a mostly-blue skirt in the back of Chickadee's closet (purchased when she was 7, and yes, this size 7 skirt is STILL too big around on her), and---yes,...
