I hope they will always, always remember the day we drove to the polls to BARACK THE VOTE. (And hopefully not just because I took them to Sonic, afterwards.)
For me; for you; but mostly for them
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Offspring: ecstasy and agony Articles
All in the timing
So yesterday, I was working along and minding my own business when the phone rang. It was school. Chickadee was in the nurse's office, and did I want to come pick her up? Because I am the meanest mother in the entire world, I asked if they had taken her temperature. They had not. So I offered to wait while they did. She had a fever. I thanked the caller and asked her to let Chickadee know that I would be there in ten minutes. Twenty minutes later we were back home and Chickadee crawled into bed and was asleep almost instantly. Poor thing. Ten minutes after THAT, the phone rang. It was...
Maybe he’ll name his yacht after us
I meant to sit down and write something this morning, before I had to drop everything and take Monkey up to the orthodontist to get braces installed on every remaining tooth and possibly a few of his limbs, but as usual, I didn't get it done. I was too busy doing work things. And also soup things. I do love my crockpot, but some day I'm going to figure out how to remember that when recipes call for a metric buttload of chopped vegetables I should probably take care of that the night before, rather than while checking email and making phone calls and freaking out about everything that needs...
Diddums loves the flugelhorn
I have an absolutely not-at-all-facetious question that is starting to gnaw away at me, so I'm going to ask it even though it may result in the revocation of my mothering credentials. While I very much believe that children display their own personhood, if you will, quite early on---toddlerhood is all about making it clear that I HAVE OPINIONS, DAMMIT! after all---I don't believe that most of them have a very good sense of what sorts of activities they will enjoy, long-term. Sure, you have the occasional kid who picks up a violin at age three and is a virtuoso by eight, but for most,...
Raising Yoda
I am neglecting you, I know, because I am too busy basking in the wonder that is having two other adults in the household to keep the children entertained. All of my careful tidying up prior to our visitors' arrival has been flung asunder in favor of taking out every last Lego and every single doll outfit, and frankly, I don't care. Everyone is having fun. Including me! Also, we are busy eating everything that isn't nailed down. FOOD IS LOVE! This morning, Monkey took my dad down to the pond for a while to "catch some fish." This involves dipping butterfly nets into the water, trapping some...
Two mysteries
When I got up this morning, I walked into the kitchen and stepped in a puddle in front of the kitchen sink. (This is rarely a good way to start the day.) In our case, though, it turned out to be less annoying and more extremely perplexing---investigation revealed the puddle to be some sort of cleaning fluid (I suspect the sort of "general cleaner" I sometimes buy by the jug), but we cannot figure out the source. I mean, in front of the sink, there, I expected either some sort of catastrophic plumbing issue or a bottle in the under-sink cabinet gone capsized. And... nothing. We can find...
Love listens
We are in the midst of one of those difficult times that makes being a parent so much harder than ought to be legal. Because the backtalking, yeah, that's dreadful. The bickering amongst siblings, sure, that's crazy-making. The leaving things all over the house, the eyerolling, the complaining, the whining---oh Lord, the whining!---these are terrible things, yes? But they pale in comparison to The Hurt You Can't Fix. And right now, Chickadee has a hurt we can't fix. She is trying to speak up for herself, and she is trying to be brave, and yet she's in a situation where she is not being...
Ten years off my life, every time
I would like to tell you that there comes a point in parenting where you become impervious to the rough and tumble nature of kids. Surely, there comes a point where you're no longer afraid that you "broke the baby" or whatever, right? RIGHT? Sadly, I have yet to experience this magical time when I can stop worrying about one of the children falling over dead. And while I'm perfectly willing to believe that I am slightly more neurotic than the average person (shut up), I really think this is one of those "features" of motherhood that people just don't talk about very much. Sure, we all swap...
Further “not in the manual” chapters
My favorite overused joke is about how once Chickadee becomes a teenager, it's either military boarding school (for her) or the Witness Protection Program (for me). I still feel woefully ill-equipped to handle a teenager, but I guess I'll be getting one in a few years whether I'm ready or not. The thing is, though, everything's a moving target. I remember having one of those deep, philosophical conversations, once, with a mentor who was already a senior citizen when I was in college. "I think about it, now," I said, "and 50 or 60 seems really OLD, to me. But maybe that's because I'm 20....