Suburban Bliss:: Birth Control Via The Written Word

This is a Good Day. Relatively Speaking.

I really believed being divorced would be the worst thing to happen to me in my adult life. Back in the haze of depression, I honestly believed I would die from the pain. I believed it would kill me, and if it didn't kill me I wouldn't be able to keep living like a reasonably normal person.

I believed that because I love Logan, I believe there is (was?) a lot of good in our marriage and in our family. 

I also believed that because no one ever loved me. I mean, not in the best way. I believed that because I've always been abandoned in so many ways, this abandoning seemed too much to bear.

That's the part of my brain that needed this to happen to be whole.

But I mostly believed divorce would kill me because I have always thought of my marriage and my family as my reward for surviving the hideousness of my first sixteen years in the world. And that has always felt like too much to bear after everything else.

But life isn't fair. There's no scorekeeper.

Now that I've lived with the pain of this reality for 22 days, I am as shocked as anyone that I am still living. I am less depressed than I was even 8 months ago. I am shaky on my feet. I am sensitive. I am unable to hold all these feelings in like I'd planned to do when I came home from the hospital.

If you know me in real life, I'm probably going to freak out. Please pretend not to notice.

But I am upright. I am living life. I am going to work. I'm seeing friends & I'm loving my kids.  

I was beyond hurt when I found out this week that as soon as 2 weeks after I got out of the hospital, my husband was asking my therapist when it would be "safe" for him to leave. I was hurt because I still thought he was trying and I'd lost him long before that time. I felt foolish and pathetic and sad. I was also hurt because that is not the kind of man I've always known my husband to be.

But then, depression has a lot of victims.

The kids are okay. They're as good as they could be I think. They might be even better if I could stop crying every once in a while. (I have had almost two full days without crying!)(Five without crying in front of the kids.)

But, I am not going to beat myself up about crying in front of the kids. I've been careful to explain to them that I'm sad because this is really awful, but even in my darkest times I've been able to tell them, truthfully, that this is going to be okay. We are all going to be okay.

We just have to go through this pain.

I'm not going beat myself up for writing all this down.

It makes Logan very angry that I write the way I do. He's tried to get used to it, to accept it as part of who I am, what makes me who I am. But he's never liked it and now that I have no reason to temper my words, I'm sure he's worried about what I'll publish.

He's not wrong to worry about this, I know this. I do have a hard time controlling myself especially when I am in emotional distress. On the one hand I like to think, 'Oh well, this is a snapshot of my life right now' and on the other hand I realize how damaging words can be.

It's part of what I've been working on in therapy and this set back has made that difficult again. 

Logan is worried about me sharing the intimate details about our marriage, the places where I feel it fell apart. And though I know there is never any "truth" in these sorts of things, there's only ever what you think, what the other person thinks and then...maybe reality but no one will ever actually know reality.

I feel pretty strongly about my truth, at least most of it, some of it I know is only "truth" because I am hurting and afraid.

Of course I'm writing this on a Good Day. On a bad day I feel like Linda Blair spraying split pea soup around the room. 

I believe our marriage was salvagable, but now there are tiny peeks of things I've overlooked and lived with because I loved Logan and I loved our life. 

The other day I realized I had been looking at the best in Logan and dismissing everything else. That's the way I've written about him the majority of the time I've had this site, because he is a whole lot of good. He really is. I could never deny that truth.

But...but there have been times, many times he wasn't who I believed him to be. There have been many times he didn't live up to who he is supposed to be. I say "supposed" to be because I know he is all those beautiful things, even now, I know he was supposed to be more whole than he is right now. 

I know he's not supposed to be that with me.

I looked for the best in Logan and ignored the rest. I realized this week he hadn't returned the favor in a long time (though he did for quite some time) and that was very eye opening. 

My therapist said to me a few weeks ago, "Most people in marital trouble come in to my office pointing fingers at the other part of the relationship to define what's 'wrong'. You're the first one who came in believing the complete opposite. Everything is not your fault."

I realized then that believing you're the problem gives you an odd sense of power. If you're the problem, you are also the solution. The only problem is when you're working your ass off to fix the problem and everything keeps falling apart anyway. 

At that point you're the problem and you're too broken to even fix it. It's a heavy load.

Logan came into our recent round of therapy blaming me for what had gone wrong in our relationship. He lashed out and lashed out hard. Fat, lazy, turning into my mother...all my hot spots. After a few therapy sessions he changed his story saying no one was to blame, no one was at fault, we'd just grown apart. He was worn out by the life we have shared up to this point and couldn't go on.

This is mature, sure. But I also feel like it never acknowledges what he's done wrong.

I've been very open about what I did wrong in our marriage. I have depression, I have a hard time discerning blood and ketchup, I am quick to be defensive and angry. I've blown up friendships Logan held dear (that perhaps I should have held dear) as a result of these personality faults. My open filter has made Logan uncomfortable with family and sometimes friends. 

I am not fat and I am not lazy, but it would be impossible for me to argue my emotional shortcomings in all their various forms. I wish I could fix them but the truth is, while I keep working and changing and growing, I'll never be someone entirely different than I am. Perhaps if you checked in on me at 20 year intervals only, you'd see the growth that happens in that time. 

Logan, just doesn't seem able to see those sorts of things in himself. Or rather, he doesn't seem able to communicate his awareness of those sorts of things in himself...maybe both. I like to think it would make me feel better if Logan would stop saying no one is to blame for how things have turned out and would say instead, "Here's where I f-ed up."

But then maybe it wouldn't feel better because then I'd think, "Okay well you know that! NOW FIX IT!!!!"

There's really no winning at this point. There's no feeling better. 

The only thing you can do in this place is trust the future. Trust that everyone is right, that it will get better. That your kids will get used to this. That you'll find new friends to replace the ones you're losing. That you'll learn things about yourself you didn't know.

But most of all I'm hoping I realize that Logan came into my life when he was supposed to. We were better together for a long time. Now I have to trust that I've grown enough to be better all on my own.

Keep in mind you're reading this on a good day.
I reserve the right to tear Logan's innards out tomorrow. Figuratively, of course.

Logan is moving out on Saturday.
The kids are going to stay there Sunday and Monday, Logan will take them to their first day of school.

I've always loved time alone in my own house, it recharges me. But I have to tell you I am terrified of what it will feel like when I realize this is my new "normal", that my husband is gone, my kids are gone and I am alone.

I hope those days are "good" days too. 

******

Today I took my paycheck to my bank and deposited it into my own account. And I withdrew my rent from that deposit as a cashier's check and it wasn't all of my paycheck. There was still money left.

When I got home, my checks were in the mailbox.

MELISSA SUMMERS 

In big letters, just my name. On the first solo account I've had since the Standard Federal account I opened when I was 18.

******

It's so scary to be facing this new life only trusting everyone else that it will be okay eventually.

On the good days I realize this is supposed to be happening. That I have so much to learn. 

I met Logan when I was 20 and a very scared little girl. I am 37 years old now and I've learned so much in this lifetime. On the good days I know this is supposed to be happening.

On the bad days I can't accept this is my new life. I just want to hold onto all the good we had that I thought would sustain us forever. 

On the good days, I know it was supposed to end this way.

 

Fourteen Day Countdown

I did it! I finally landed a job offer! 

When I got the call I...may have passed out 3 times during the discussion of the actual offer. I am beyond happy about this change in my life. Of course it's not without worrying, because I am who I am.

I'm securing a summer sitter and wondering how the kids will adjust to a Summer of Sitters. Which is, frankly, better than a Summer of a Frustrated Mother Who Doesn't Exactly Relish The Role of Full Time Mother. Then I wonder how they'll adjust to life without mom home after school, the 12 days I was away in Texas was probably good practice for that, but it'll still be new for us as a family. 

I am not focusing on this sort of thought process very much because (with pharmeceuticals) I've come to learn that almost everything happens over time without very much panic on my part. So we'll just focus on getting through the summer and then the fall and then so on and so on. 

I start the job right after the Fourth of July weekend so I have two weeks to pack in summer with the kids. For many people this wouldn't seem like enough time, but for me...it's absolutely perfect. There's no looming 10 weeks of time to fill...just 2 weeks to do fun stuff with the kids. By the time I'm bored and the bickering has started, I'll be handing off the task to a babysitter. Sublime.

But! I have a question especially for those of you who've been working outside the house for some time. If you had two weeks off with your kids...what would you do so that you really felt like you'd gotten everything out of that time? 

I ask because, after 12 years of being at home with the kids, working freelance and other times not, I know I've come to take for granted the miles and miles of time I have with the kids. I can imagine in 3, 6, 9 months and beyond I'll likely look back wistfully at all those miles of time rather than the anxiety I feel now when faced with those same miles of time to fill up.

What are the things you wish you had time to do with your kids when you're at the office most of the week? What sorts of things should I do to get my house/family ready for the change of pace being a full time working parent will bring? 

All advice wanted (except if your advice is to not go back to work....kindly skip that advice).

(PS: My first paycheck will pay off my student loan....yes, I realize I'm 37. Life hasn't gone according to plan.)

 

My Long Break

I went to Texas for 12 days. I went without my family and spent a full 7 of those days all by myself. You would think this would be awful. But it actually wasn't for someone like myself who likes a slow pace and the freedom that comes from doing whatever you want whenever you feel like it. 

I went to San Antonio to visit my friend Jean. Jean was heading to Italy and France for a couple of weeks with her husband and all of her (grown) kids. I'm sure her vacation was nice but I had this all to myself.

Yes, I realize that's her every day life, whatever. (Look how I didn't even stage this picture...you can see my bathing suit on the lounge chair and everything. That's old school blogging.)

Once Jean left for her so called "vacation" my friend Chris came down to visit. She ate her first gluten free french toast at The Little Aussie Bakery and we saw the movie Bridesmaids, which made me laugh...though the food poisoning scene...let's say I have a sensitive gag reflex.

Then we drank coffee, read magazines and sat in the hot tub. Sometimes all at the same time. Chris stayed out in the little guest suite even though the house has enough bedrooms and bathrooms for a small army, because I think everyone should stay in the little guest suite. Especially people who need a break. I stayed in Jean's room. It was a hardship but...you know...

When Chris went back home, I drove up the next day to Austin to see my friend Jill who I hadn't seen in years. Literally. Luckily she's easy to hang out with and took me to get a cupcake from a food truck. Food trucks and swimming pools are two extremely lacking areas of my life. 

I raced home from Austin because I was also dog sitting Sophie....and Sophie wasn't happy about two things: I'm not Jean and I didn't invite her to dinner with Jill and me.

I tried but Sophie just didn't like me as much as her regular people. I took her for lots of walks, even through Brackenridge park which actually I think annoyed her even more as she probably thought I was lost. When she woke up at 6am I fed her, even though the note said she didn't eat until 7am...Sophie, I was on vacation....and I like you that much!

Here's Sophie watching me watch television suggesting that maybe she could SHOW ME TO THE DOOR NOW.

I tried to explain to her that my dog thinks I am THE SHIT, but she didn't care.

When I wasn't lounging by the pool I did a little sight-seeing. I walked through the King William neighborhood and ate lunch at Mad Hatters Tea House. I also drove around like a complete moron trying to find this enourmous thing.

It's the tallest thing in San Antonio and I couldn't find it. My GPS was confused as well* and took me into an unrelated hotel parking structure where I paid $9 for the privilige of realizing I was at the wrong place. 
*My gps wasn't really confused...it was all me. 

But then I rode the elevator to the top and it was all worth it....especially the part where it was full of loud school kids on field trips and also the observation deck is a windy spot and the dress I was wearing really really wanted to be over my head, rather than protecting my modesty as God intended. 

That was enough tourism for me so I went back to what I do best.

Don't worry I went to yoga every day so it wasn't all fun and games... 

Except that it mostly was all fun and games. 

I came home and Logan and the kids (and a few well placed friends, Thanks Stephanie!) worked like a well oiled machine managing school, full time job, baseball, a 2 mile race, braces, an ear infection, a school concert, a few parties and a bat in the house.

A bat. In the house. That was flying around my son's room while he slept.

I think it's great Logan is so capable of managing the house and kids without me. It would cause me limitless irriation if he was a dad who had to call me every three minutes to ask where I keep the laundry detergent or Max's baseball gear, or where the orthodontist is located...but on the other hand I admit it: It's nice to be missed. 

Maddie and I texted a little back and forth and she filled me in on some of the tiny cracks in the Super Dad bill of fare Logan was selling me. I didn't want him to fail, but it was reassuring to hear that it was a little stressful for him and he's not Mary God Damn Poppins when I'm away. But even with Maddie's inside scoop, I admit it, he's better at managing chaos than I am. 

Of course I went to cook dinner a couple days after I got home, started up the oven and smelled something funny. I opened the oven and oh...

Baking sheets from the slab of ribs he cooked 10 days earlier. It's not a lot but it's not Type A and I'll take what I can get when trying to prove The Robot's humanity.

Maddie Conquers Public Speaking

After a few years of prodding, Maddie has started to try some new things at school. She's never been interested in sports, she doesn't love competing. And though she has excellent leadership capabilities, I think she's still figuring out how to use that capability. 

She plays violin and after wanting to quit every single day for the entire whole of last year, has decided she actually likes it. But other than that, she hasn't really gone out for much outside of excelling academically. 

If I were a Tiger Mother this would be fine, ideal even. But since I am not I've been hoping Maddie would find her way into some extras that work for her. 

Enter Model United Nations!

She attended a conference at University of Michigan a couple of weeks ago and Logan volunteered to drive. He came home with these pictures of Maddie and I think you'll all share my awe when I show you them. My daughter is so seriously on the cusp of her teens, it's absolutely terrifying and thrilling.

I enjoy her so much the older she gets. Like when she was a baby I loved seeing what came next. I'm still loving watching what comes next. 

Max's Talent Show Debut: He's Cooler Than You.

Max got a guitar for his 9th birthday last March. This year, as a 10 year old with about a year of lessons under his belt, he decided to perform at the annual school talent show. 

It was the first time either of our kids performed solo...and I was a bit of a wreck waiting for it. 

Luckily, Max was unflappable. For a little while I wondered if he realized there would be actual people watching him play guitar on a stage.

He did his thing, I was very proud. And then I spent 10 minutes after his performance shaking....clearly I'm never going to have a Toddlers and Tiaras kid. 

Reuse Craft Night

The other night Max was supposed to create a craft using repurposed items you'd normally dispose or recycle. He was given a bag with some wire, a few styrofoam peanuts and that was about it.

I took one look at the supplies and planned to help Max make a styrofoam peanut caterpillar walking on a couple of popsicle sticks. I'm super creative. 

Luckily Logan is generally in charge of these types of projects. Look what they came up with:

It's a helicopter. 

They used a shell, some cardboard, picture hangers, pipe cleaners...

A fuzzy thing we had in our craft box, magnets and a bottle cap...

My favorite part is the wire hanger made into a display rack.

Snow Day: Sled Day!

I've become increasingly fond of snow days. I don't feel like my day is ruined by that early morning call from the superintendent. Unfortunately for Max his biggest dreams for snow days involve being outside....in the actual snow. 

This is something I try to avoid because I am a fragile flower.

But this last snow day I sucked it up and we went sledding. When I say "we" I mean the kids because we're between insurance for another few weeks (knock on wood) and God knows I'd break my face again if I attempted a run down the hill. 

About a half hour into this adventure I realized....we don't have insurance for another few weeks...so what the hell did I bring the kids here for? I spent the rest of our visit wincing and praying no one broke a bone.

Fortunately, Maddie is the most uncoordinated, cautious sledder in the world. She leaned to fall off the minute she went faster than .002 mph. Daredevil, she is not.

Maddie brought a friend because how could she have fun with her brother? 

Max brought a friend because Maddie refuses to have fun with him.

At the end, we were all exhausted, cold....and happy.

And I noticed, in the car, a halo had appeared over my head because I am the Nicest Mother Ever.

Like a little guy in a bigger body.

At some point over Christmas break Max did a couple of things that made him, to put it mildly, LOSE IT.

There was the stress of dad being busier than we're used to, the stress of mom not exactly handling it well, there were relaxed bedtimes and late nights. Oh and a big sister who showed him a "Prank Calling Site" with a bunch of dialog from movies like The Ring. Weeeee!

This ended in 5 nights 7 nights (so far) of near hysterics at bedtime. 

My favorite moment of this latest bedtime drama was the other morning when my little guy woke up saying he was way too tired to go to school. 

And then he spent the next 20 minutes violently stomping up the stairs and yelling about how...well no, actually he just yelled. Sending Lucy The Neurotic Dog under the sofa. Because having a raging tantrum takes a lot less energy than school. 

To put it mildly, he didn't appreciate me pointing this out. 

On the 5th night, I went up to check on him as he barely held his shit together in bed. I reminded him of when he was a lot younger and I'd rub his sheets to keep bad dreams away. Literally I'd just run my hands up and down on the fitted sheet, my mother would do this when I was little too. He didn't think it would work because he isn't having bad dreams, it's just scary images in his head. But I suggested maybe it would help and certainly it couldn't hurt, right? 

So I did my thing...rubbing the sheets up and down and in circles and back up again...

He got back in bed. I said I would come back to check on him in 20 minutes.

When I came back he wasn't on the verge of tears. I gave him another hug, he said, "It's weird I know, but I think rubbing the sheets actually helped."

We agreed I'd come back up and check on him again in another 20 minutes. 

I woke him up checking on him. He said, "Why don't you check on me again if I call for you."

I'm in shock that old trick worked. Though I will say, when I rub his sheets I do try to think of calming things, I try to feel comfort in my hands. Maybe it helps, maybe it's psychological. Worst case my kid feels like I take his fears seriously and that calms him. 

I love that. 

Somehow the sheet rubbing seems to wear off at around 4:30 in the morning. At which point I remember exactly why I didn't have a third kid and my ovaries jump out of my body and pat me on the back. "Good decision!" they say, and I agree.

(We're tired.)

Mom & Daughter Journal: It's harder to scream in horror in writing.

I've always prided myself on being a very open person with my kids. Being willing to talk about anything, especially typically awkward topics like sex, periods, boys...unfortunately my kids are horrified by talking about these sorts of things. It's difficult to answer a question about where babies come from without using the words, "Penis" or "Vagina" or "Uterus" or "Egg" or (Brace Yourself For Shrieks of Horror) "Sperm".

I ended up buying a book called The Care & Keeping of You from American Girl. I liked the tone and straightforward approach and Maddie had read some of their other titles so I was reasonably sure she wouldn't hurl herself from her bedroom window after reading this one.

I gave her the book and said, "If you want to talk about anything, just know I'm here to answer anything." But, you see, it's hard to talk to your mother about embarrassing things like hair under your arms. I mean, what the hell does she know about that? She's a million years old.

I mentioned to friends how hard it is for Maddie to talk to me and how much it concerned me the older she got. It's one thing for her not to talk to me about shaving her legs, it's a whole other thing for her to be making decisions about her body and boys without any input from an adult we know and trust. It doesn't have to be me, but obviously I'd prefer it was. 

One of the friends mentioned she and her daughter keep a journal they pass back and forth to each other. They write about their concerns, things that made them laugh, questions....etc. Her daughter is 9 and the oldest of her three kids, so it's less about big things (like boys and smoking) and more a way of making sure that in their busy lives they're sure to connect in a deeper way and that the communication is open when the questions do become bigger.

Maddie and I started out doing this, and boy I can't WAIT to tell you everything she wrote. 

Ha! I'm kidding, rule one is it's just between us.

But generally the first entries were just questions she wanted answered without having to actually say any potentially offensive (to her sensitive ears) words. Over time however we both got a little lazy about replying or adding new entries.

Then one afternoon while browsing downtown Royal Oak, with Maddie angling for (yet another) Hoodie, we stopped into Scout (best retail in Royal Oak, fyi) and saw this book, Just Between Us: A No-Stress, No-Rules Journal for Girls and Their Moms.

It's a loosely guided journal for mothers and daughters and it's breathed new life into our discussions. Last night I wrote on a page with the following questions, "How are we the same?" "How are we different?" "What do you admire about me?"

There are some pages I've avoided, "What was it like growing up in your house?" Weeee there's a giant Matzoh ball Maddie! But there are plenty of easier topics, "What are your top 10 favorite songs?" "What's your dream outfit?" 

Maddie and I struggle at times, she finds me frustrating a lot of the time and sometimes I find her frustrating. She tends to think when Logan and I speak more than 3 sentences to her we're "lecturing". I feel a little tongue tied and, I also find myself trying very hard not to say too much, not to react to things she says too quickly, not to let any judgement pass across my face. It's a lot to be aware of when we're talking. I need a nap after dinner most nights, I'm exhausted from trying to be a good listener.

This is where writing has come in for us. We're both really good at expressing ourselves in writing and often feel misunderstood when we speak. It's easier for me to read what she says and not feel like I have to jam my thoughts down her throat. It's easier for me to look at what she's written and get at the core of what she's feeling and empathize with her. 

If there's something I want to talk about later, I can on a different page but when I'm reading what she's written, I just "hear" her. 

The other day she wrote (I've asked if it's okay to mention this) about some frustration with some of her friendships. It was eye opening for me to be able to relate to her, as a grown woman, with my own friendships.

When I had a daughter I hoped to have the relationship with her I always wanted with a mother. There have been times, many, many, many times that I've worried Maddie and I are missing each other in some very important ways. The older she gets the more determined I am to make sure we have a strong connection so that as she winds her way through adolescence into adulthood we're a team rather than adversaries.

It's reassuring as she enters her teen years to have this place I'm sure I'm doing that right.

*I will always tell you when I've been asked to review a product or have been compensated to write about a certain topic. This is simply a book and an idea I thought you may find relevant. That said, the two links in this post are through my Amazon Affiliate account.*

Twelve Years Ago Today They Sent Me Home With This Kid.

Maddie turned 12 this week. 12 is dangerously close to 13 and having a child who is a teenager is pretty scary I'll admit. Luckily Madison has been giving us lots of practice with biting our tongues and accepting some of her more sullen moods so by the time she's actually a teenager we'll be without tongues so hopefully we won't embarrass her.

I try to have a real party for the kids every other year for their birthdays. On the off years we'll do something small, like have a couple of friends stay the night or go to dinner and a movie.  This year was a party year and we threw together a slumber party in very little time. 

I like Maddie's friends. She seems to be drawn to girls who are funny and kind and not afraid to be enthusiastic. This is good for Maddie who seems at times like she deliberately tries not to have fun. I'm not sure where she got the idea that acting like you're not having fun is cool but My Goodness....sometimes I think my tongue is going to fall off sooner than her 13th birthday at this rate.

For Maddie's sleepover the plan was to have a lot of candy, cake and movies. Also in the plan: Very Little Sleep.

I set up a photobooth for the girls in the dining room. This is ideal because they all (except a lone hold out) are obsessed with Facebook. 108 Facebook photos later, I think they liked it.

They played Beanboozled, a game where you try to avoid getting a disgusting flavored bean like pencil shavings, centipede or baby wipe. Lucy, as you can see, is wondering why everyone's freaking out over the dog food bean, she'll take it.  

Max stayed at a friends house that night to avoid the shrieking herd of elephants on the main level of the house. (Wow, girls shriek a lot!) Logan told the girls to come out on the deck, there's a lunar eclipse tonight!

(Note the girls looking into the dark, while Logan runs the other way...)

Then out of the dark backyard came four boys with cans of silly string flying. This is the aftermath.

Well played boys.

After that excitement we ate popcorn...with a side of bacon. 

I also made chocolate mustache pops for the girls. Because, yeah, mustaches and bacon. It's the Internet a year ago in my house! (You can find the mustache mold here.)

Sigh, remember when I had a real camera? That took actual pictures? That was nice. Oh well...

Why don't you check out this Photobooth picture of my beautiful, complex, emotionally smart twelve year old daughter?

Her friends have actual faces, but you know....better safe than a social pariah among the middle school parents!

She drives me totally nuts but it's been fun watching her become who she is every single day so far. I can't wait to see what comes next. 

*Don't forget to enter to win a Windows Phone 7!

Sponsored Post & Giveaway: "I'm Done!: A Tale Of Bathroom Terrorism"

This post is brought to you by Quilted Northern Soft & Strong®.

A video post! How novel, now you can see my teeth, my temporary teeth made of gum and also the dark recesses of my nostrils (sorry!).

This video is about my son and his resistance to wiping his own butt. I still have nightmares and the soundtrack is "I'M DOOOOOOONNNNNNE!" (*At one point in the video I notice it looks like my underarm is wet and I touch it to check. JSYK, it wasn't wet, just a symptom of a webcam distortion.)

 

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Or is it chickens that are delicious when left to roam?

It's times like these I really really miss my camera. I made an apple strudel yesterday and how I longed to show you the process and the delicious finished product. 

Instead I have no camera so I have to shiv myself with a broken glass bottle of emotion and share the carnage with you. 

Actually I'm not even ready to write that particular post. So instead I'll rant which is almost as exhausting. Because inevitably this will end with a discussion of what a shitty person I am. And...sigh...I know I know. It's just the way the internet works. But...still. Anyway here goes.

******

I know why kids are fat. 

And it's not because I don't get outside and play soccer with them for hours, it's not because schools are cutting gym programs, and it's not because they play too many video games, and it's not because of high fructose corn syrup, and it's not because there are toys in Happy Meals. 

Oh sure, it's partly all those things. I won't argue that.

However, I will say this, kids are less active because we're terrified of letting them be even a little independent. 

******

At the elementary school, the drop off line is, in a word: totallyfuckingnuts.

One of the things that makes the drop off line so dysfunctional are the parents who insist on not pulling forward as far as possible but stopping at the specific door their child enters the school at. Because walking 5-20 feet is clearly too much to ask of a child. An additional cluster-f*ck (yes, I just censored one and not the other...) happens when a parent in the drop off line not only refuses to pull as far forward as possible but also has to watch their child at the door until the door opens and the child goes inside. 

I assume they do this because something terrible might happen to the child in the 3-5 minutes from the point of drop off and the moment of entry to the building. This unnamed terribleness will happen in front of several parents who have chosen to park their cars and wait with their children. Or the other parents who are volunteering their time to try and keep a child from being hit by a car in the cluster-f*ck that is the school drop off line.

None of those people will help prevent TERRIBLENESS from happening.

You just sit there holding up the drop off line making sure your child is not molested/kidnapped/emotionally wounded while waiting for the door to open.

******

I expect Maddie to walk home from school. It's less than half a mile and I walked that distance to and from school as a kindergartner. It seemed to me a reasonable expectation for an almost 11 year old. Sometimes I meet her half way because I know the walk is boring and Lucy usually needs a walk by then anyway. Sometimes I pick her up in the car if it's especially frigid (though I bought her a particularly expensive coat because of its arctic weather capabilities) or when it's raining. 

I mentioned Maddie walking home off-handedly on this website last year and got some ruffled feathers in email. Even more surprisingly, from a friend who seemed very uncomfortable with this set up. So much so that we ended up in an unofficial daily car pool with Logan driving the girls in the morning and my friend driving the girls home at the end of the day.

******

The kids are working on a community youth theater production this month. The theater is less than 1/10 of a mile from our home, door to door. I told the organizers it was okay with me for the kids to walk home after meetings and that I'd likely only come to pick them up if it was raining or dark out. 

I got back a 500+ word email (cc'd to eight theater organizers) explaining the dangers of this situation to me. She wrote, among many many other alarmed words, "I live around the block from the theater as well, we can see the theater marquee from my daughter's bedroom! And I don't even let my own kids, who are 13 and 15 walk home by themselves."

She also pointed out that even "...on a short walk, past a parking garage, day or night, anything could happen."

Anything? Really? Like a dance crew of koalas singing show tunes? A miniature horse waiting to let me ride him around town! ANYTHING COULD HAPPEN!

So far, nothing has happened. But every time Lucy and I walk that route I'm just waiting for SOMETHING! ANYTHING! To happen! (Not mimes....please no mimes.)

I told the organizers that we would of course comply with their rules, I thought they were being a little silly. I also may have said I'd send the dog to pick the kids up. But really I'm not going to make a big deal about this, I'll follow the rules and hopefully as we walk we pick up a discarded winning lotto ticket (ANYTHING COULD HAPPEN).

Last night, as I once again lamented the note the theater organizer sent me, to Logan he said, "You know, you don't have to take this personally."

And I said, "Of course I don't have to...but what fun is that?" 

But then I thought about what else, outside of the implication that letting a 9.5 year old and a (just shy of) 12 year old walk .09 miles is somehow terribly neglectful, is bothering me?

I think what's bothering me about it is this deeply engrained notion in our society that children should be managed and watched at all times.

That the world is such a dangerous place the sky can fall at any moment and if, as a parent, you aren't there at all times, from the time you drop your kids at the school door to the time they're safely back on the sofa in front of a video game (because no one gets hurt in front of a video game, right?), it's your fault the sky has fallen.

Obviously, I don't choose to raise my children that way. I choose to let go and give freedom and not make myself crazy with worry.

But yes, I bristle when people overtly judge (harshly) that choice. 

I wish there was a shift in opinion as a society because I do believe this is at the root of why our kids are less active and perhaps less capable and independent beings.

I want it to be okay to let your kids walk around the block without someone telling you it's your fault they were kidnapped.

Besides, Free Range Children taste a lot more delicious.

To Remember:

When Max was 3 his favorite book was Are You My Mother?

At the end, the baby bird finds his mother and says, "You are a bird and you are my mother."

That's how Max used to say good night to me. 

Miss Poodle & Mr Rock And Roll Hair Make A Baby

My friend Jean sent a birthday gift that wasn't my broken teeth. Thoughtful, yes?

She made a card with a picture of me and her oldest back in the 80s. 

In the 80's I enjoyed perming my hair. Also, by all appearances I liked resembling a poodle. 

Max saw this picture and said to me, "Wow, that wasn't your real hair was it?"

"No it was something called a perm."

"Thank goodness that wasn't your hair because Maddie and I would have some bad hair if two people with that kind of hair had babies."

And, Oof! He's right. 

Life List: River Float

This summer we went on a river float. This is an item on my Life List. The best way to tell you about our very first river float would be to show you some colorful, slightly tweaked photos. They'd put you right there. Give you the sense of how great it was. 

I'd show you the cooler full of juice boxes, I'd show you the other cooler full of very light beers (practically water) and the other adult concoction Logan whipped up for the event.

I'd show you the sweet Rottweiler who lived at the place we went to. I'd show you how dirty our car got finding the place we rented our tubes from. I'd show you all the times we turned around and passed the other two families who went with us because all three of our GPS's told us different ways to get there. 

I'd also probably have a pretty good picture of me falling into the water not even two minutes into the float, trying to save the cooler tube from floating away to Canada...(Pro Tip: Ask if they have rope where you rent your tubes. If they don't and you're floating down a river with ten kids and six adults...bring some rope.)

I can't show you these things because someone dropped our camera so this entire summer, my Best Summer In A Long Time, will forever consist of crappy iPhone photos taken with my 3g phone. Sigh. 

We went up north again this summer with some friends, like we did last year. This year there was another family with us and another couple of kids thrown into the mix. 

I'd mentioned I wanted to do a river float before we headed up, everyone was into it, sounded like fun. So we prepared to do it the day before our family went home.

LIFE LIST!

Two of the kids had a traumatic experience with a rain storm a few weeks prior and it threatened to rain at several points during this day. The result was these poor kids were scared the entire time that it might rain. Like two tiny terrified meteorologists...from Texas. (Where rain is considered a state of emergency.)

LIFE LIST!

As we waited to get on the road one of the kids in our group decided the van we would be travelling in to be dropped off up the river to start our float was not suitable. And I'll grant her that. It really wasn't suitable as anything other than a giant rapist van. It was only missing curtains on the windows and maybe some sort of airbrushed eagle. Or angel. But we went on anyway.

LIFE LIST!

One of the older kids told the littler ones there were snakes in the water. Ha ha ha! ...... So those little kids were pretty excited to get in the water. 

LIFE LIST!

We get in the water and the two littlest floaters are, in a word, petrified, though they'd done this before in Florida. I almost brought up the gators in Florida, they should have been scared then not now! But one look at my friend's face as she held the hand of her terrified child told me it wasn't a good idea.
So we floated down the river with a bit of a soundtrack, a soundtrack I'd entitle, "I don't want to do this." One of the kids cried for so long he actually fell asleep. Or maybe he left his body and went to his happy place to endure this particular level of hell. [Enter adult beverages here.] 

LIFE LIST!

A little ways down the river one of our party gets stuck in the branches on the side of the river with one of the really terrified children. As we try to talk them out of their predicament, she screams so loudly I thought to myself, "Holy Crap, the kid was right about the snakes."
It wasn't a snake but an enormous spider. Her husband jumps off his tube to rescue his wife and child who we think are being attacked by a water moccasin. When everyone is safe he realizes...he's lost his wedding band at the bottom of the river.

LIFE LIST!

This is the part of the float where we regrouped. We got our everyone's tubes together, all 10 kids and 6 adults. We got everyone a beverage, the sun came out so the Terrified Meteorologists could relax, the little kids either passed out or started to relax. We came up with a plan for keeping everyone connected and started floating down the river.

Life List!

Keeping all our tubes connected was a little like a giant game of Twister. You grab that persons ankle and another person's hand. Then you switch and someone's holding your ankle and you're grabbing another person's hand. But don't let go without telling someone you're doing it and making sure they're holding onto someone else!

Life List!

Sometimes we ran into trouble, A couple kids stuck on a branch. Or someone accidentally letting go. By that time Maddie had gotten used to walking along the murky river and we'd send her against the current to help collect people and reconnect them to the group. Or more importantly distribute beverages where needed. (Everyone got two!) We started calling her our "River Otter". As in, "River Otter! Help!" I don't think I've ever seen Maddie so happy to help anyone. Even her brother.  

Life List!

One of our friends likes to yell "Hey Oh!" Maddie thinks it's when someone says something inappropriate. I think of it more as an all-purpose exclamation. We started a Call and Response halfway down the river. One person yelling "Hey" everyone else yelling "Oh!"

Life List!

By the time we arrived at the dock, with the big friendly rottweiler waiting to greet us, we were all relaxed. Everyone had had fun (except maybe our youngest travel companion who was happy...it was over).  We were all in sync. 

We were a team. 

Life List!

Back To School Gift

Maddie forced me to go to the mall on Labor Day. I have strong feelings about going to malls, shops or restaurants on holidays. I think everyone should have that day off, color me communist/socialist/unAmerican. 

Additionally I just plain hate the mall. 

But I was nearly 12 once and I know the thrill of walking around the mall BY YOURSELF with a friend. It gets me a little giddy remembering the first time a friend and I walked downtown after school to her mom's office to drop our back packs off and then, the freedom of roaming around all the stores totally free of our lame parents. So, I made myself scarce while Maddie and a friend made their way around the mall. 

I filled my time spit taking coffee every time I looked at a price tag. 

I remember telling my mom, "Moth-ER, $29 for a sweater (skirt, shirt, jeans) is nothing."

And Mom? I hope you're happy because now I'm stuck in the same hell of explaining to my daughter that twenty-nine dollars for a sweater you're going to outgrow in about 6-9 months is actually a lot. 

You wished for this, don't deny it. 

Still, while at the mall I came across this cute note pad at Urban Outfitters (not on their site). I paid $6 for it and sent it with Max as a back to school gift for his teacher.

  

Voila! I just saved you a bunch of money. 

2 for $3.89! 

PS: I can't guarantee your kid won't be labelled a suck up from now until forever. (Oh, sorry Max!) Maybe save this idea for teacher appreciation week and make it from the entire class!

Simple.

The kids and I slept in the tent we bought for our upcoming August camping trip. 

Every time* Max sleeps in a tent, it rains. It doesn't just rain, GOD IS PISSED MAX IS SLEEPING IN A TENT. 

God opens the sky and pours out his rage at everyone for letting Max sleep in a tent**.

*This is literal: Every time Max has slept in a tent it has at least rained. Rained A Lot. 

**I don't know why God is mad, I suspect it has little to do with Max in a tent, but I'm just using the context clues. 

While we were in the tent a lot of storms blew over us. Maddie is not a fan of storms because storms mean she isn't in control of the gravitational pull of the earth and this is upsetting to her. I mostly understand this, luckily when I worry about things, nothing bad happens to my family or those I love. Madison hasn't learned to hone her worry to those sorts of things.

I mean really? Trying to control weather? How juvenile. 

Maddie cried a little, especially when a crack of thunder happened directly over our heads. Logan says (he slept in the house) (He isn't as much fun as me) (except in a lake) the power went out with that crack of thunder.

I held her head on my shoulder on the air mattress and I put her hand to my chest and put my hand over it. Max, laying next to us, put his hand underneath. They both fell asleep like that. 

I wish all their fears, all their problems, were so easily soothed.

Summer Fun

I've been charging my computer up about once a week. I barely open it.

Luckily I'm not working for anyone else this summer so there's really no guilt and shuffling of priorities and the unending guilt that I feel when I can't do something with my kids because I'm working. 

I'm pretty happy with how the summer has been going, surprisingly. Of course what is this? Week three?  

The weather this summer so far (KNOCK ON WOOD) has been lovely compared to last year's aggravating Festival Of Rain. We've been entertaining friends again (last week 3 times!), something we kind of stopped doing at some point over the winter. 

Yesterday we spent the day out at Cass Lake with friends and their kids. Max, Maddie and Logan all went tubing on our friend's boat, for the first times. One of the only experiences I have had and Logan hasn't. On the drive home I said to Logan, "I swear I feel like we're up north." 

If you're not from Michigan you should know that Up North is like Situational Prozac or maybe Enviromental Prozac. 

My favorite thing about summer vacations up north with the kids is the nights after playing in the water all day. Around 4 or 5 you start considering scheduling showers for all the adults and kids in the house.

Everyone's skin smells like summer and feels warm to the touch...but you're not uncomfortably hot. You feel that excellent water logged relaxation in your whole body. You sit at a restaurant, usually with several families and eat a good dinner and by 9 you're ready to crawl into bed with a good book because tomorrow you're going to get up and hang out in the water all day again.

After our afternoon on the water we stopped for dinner in town with the kids and I realized I want almost all of our summer to feel like we're on vacation up north. 

That's what I've been trying to do. Staying away from the computer for the most part, spending 3-5 hours at the pool, going to the movies, eating dinner on our deck, sitting on the upper deck with Logan having an evening cocktail watching the bats fly overhead at dusk. 

Also driving this view of a relaxed, easy summer is the realization that I think I'm ready for a job out of my house. (Lucy? Is not happy to hear this.) July 14th I have my long awaited interview. 

This could very well be the last summer I have to just hang out with the kids every day in the summer. We are all well aware that acting as my children's Number One Source Of Entertainment doesn't fit me very well. But I'm smart enough to realize that all this time with them, all this time to fill, all this flexibility, is something I will miss when it's gone. 

Now it's true I still bristle when I take Maddie to the pool and she rolls her eyes and says, "LAME". Or I tell her to call a friend and she says, "No, I'll just sit here all day bored.*"

*In so many words.

The nice thing is, on the good days of this summer I think to myself, "I just want to absorb all this so I can remember it forever, we're so lucky to have this time together." 

And on the more annoying days I think to myself, "Next summer I'll be working out of the house and Logan will have to be here some of the time and they'll have to go to day camp and they'll have to have a sitter who will keep them entertained."

Somehow it makes everything feel more tolerable. It's okay, you can say it, I'm losing my edge. 

The World's Lamest Epiphany

I decided last week it was better that I just shut my pie hole because pretty much all I wanted to say was "Well, this month was a total bust." And, enh, that's boring. 

Now it's May and May is going to be better. Especially because I've signed up for the May session of Mondo Beyondo. Because inspiration is what I need right about now. I feel a little stunted, probably because half the things going on in my life right now aren't things I can talk about. That's always good for a person who enjoys writing about her life. 

I could show you the work I've been doing on our front porch, but my camera is broken. This makes me so sad I'm having a difficult time expressing my grief. 

I could tell you about how my brother has decided not to speak to me anymore. But I'd only make the issue worse and I'm hopeful someday he'll decide to speak to me again so my kids won't miss out on having a really great aunt and uncle. 

I could tell you how this dog has lost its ever loving mind and is peeing in my house all the sudden. Including on the before mentioned revamped porch. On a cushion, a cushion I unwittingly sat on to eat my breakfast yesterday. These are the kinds of things I don't really get over very quickly. Sitting in dog urine = day ruiner. 

Well, see? This is why I just shut my pie hole last week and should have kept it shut. 

Here's something marginally more entertaining. 

Last week I had the world's lamest epiphany. 

Many times I'm kind of racing around quickly getting food on the table at dinner time. Well, during dinners I just sort of throw together with frozen vegetables and pasta on nights when we're too busy (or too lazy) to do a full sit down meal. 

When I get both the kid's food on the table I feel sort of like a waitress and I can finally take my smoke break. 

Max has milk with every meal. And it's like a tic of his to immediately upon sitting down to ask me for his milk. There's an urgency to this, like his milk will keep him alive. As if today, after 8 years of serving milk to this kid at dinner, I'd suddenly forget to serve the milk and he'll die. 

I've found myself racing to get to the milk before he can ask for it because something about the asking for the milk just grates on me. (I know, it's dumb.)

The downside of having just two kids is you can actually do everything for them. My friend has four kids all about a year apart. Her youngest son who is five, can tie his shoes, balance the checkbook and makes a mean chicken marsala. 

Her expectations for her kids are a little higher because in order to get dinner on the table or get out the door in the morning in a reasonable amount of time, the kids are going to have to learn to be a little more independent. 

So suddenly, I realized: 

Max is nine years old. 
He can get his own milk.

Thank you! I am a parenting genius! I'll probably write a book about this. 

A new page: What *do* you love about having kids.

My life is a mix of several different feelings. 

Yes I feel frustrated, exhausted, and overwhelmed by my kids. But I also feel madly passionately in love with my kids. 

Maybe that's hard to see on a day to day basis when reading this site.

Here you go. An ever growing list of Things I Love About Having Kids, Mine In Particular.

Nice Example, Mom.

A few weeks ago Maddie and I were invited to an event to discuss, mainly, Mean Girls with Rosalind Wiseman. Rosalind wrote the book Mean Girls And Wannabes that was the basis of the movie Mean Girls. 

Rosalind is on a Girl World Book Tour and her presentation was one of those times I'm so happy I have a daughter. A daughter who is so much like me. For example, as we ate dinner before the event she said, "If they make us stand up and talk, can we leave?"

High Five Little Lady. We're out of there and at Dairy Queen for ice cream sundaes if there's a public speaking component.

But there wasn't. We talked about lots of things and I highly recommend Rosalind's book to learn how to talk to your daughter and also to find ways to help them deal with other girls in their class. 

[Here is a place where I am not discussing my daughter's own story because it's not mine to tell.]

What I was most surprised by was how much what we talked about applies to my own life as an adult woman, especially my life on the internet. At some point the idea of "ignoring" bullies or "mean girls" was brought up and all the girls in the room chimed in with, "NEVER WORKS DUH".

Rosalind talked about how everyone has a right to dignity. If someone doesn't respect you, your feelings and your right to exist in this world as you choose, you have a right to ask them to give you dignity. To leave you alone, ease up, move along. 

If they don't give it to you, you have a right to dismiss that person.

I immediately thought of that awful blog created to "defend" the children of various bloggers. To "defend" the children of bloggers while calling their father gay, making fun of their mother's teeth, calling their mother fat/stupid/ugly/bad.....

I realized then, I'm still as an adult dealing with Mean Girls. 

I was being bullied and just like it doesn't work for 12 year old girls, ignoring doesn't work for 36 year old girls either. I named my bully and called her out to discuss what she has to say. Of course she conveniently has come out of the wood work once the really terrible things she's had to say are lost to Google Cache and not easy for the general population to find. 

But still, here she is out in the light, forced to own her words and that feels remarkably good. 

But how do we reach adulthood still thinking it's okay to make fun of someone's teeth/call their husband gay/tell the world they don't love their children correctly?

After Rosalind Wiseman spoke Maddie and I stood in line to have her sign our books. I wanted to leave, the line was really long. Maddie insisted she really wanted that signature in her book.

As an aside, the way Maddie views authors makes me so proud. She thinks of authors, people who write and have people read them, as awe inspiring celebrities. 

We waited in line with a lot of other mothers and their preteen daughters. 

A bookstore hosted this event and the owner of the bookstore walked around taking pictures for their store's website. He was a very tall gentleman with deep set eyes and the kind of complexion that gives his eyes a darker area around them. 

A mom right behind us, after spending an evening learning about how people pick apart other people in order to feel better about themselves and how hurtful it can be, turned to her daughter and said, jovially:

"Oh, how nice! Lurch is taking pictures."

....... 

Max is 9, we had a party

Max and his friend Adam have birthdays just a couple of weeks apart and they both wanted to see Diary Of A WImpy Kid: The Movie for their party. Since they share a lot of the same friends we decided to have a party together.

I made the invitations because Logan had a lot of stuff going on. I went to Wimp Yourself and made the WImpy Kid. Using my very rudimentary Illustrator skills I tried to give it the look of the book cover art, there's a reason I ended my art school degree pursuit after two semesters.

It's probably wise to be heavily sedated before taking 10 boys to a movie theater.

Wow. 

But I wasn't since I had to drive and also make sure no one was killed while I was responsible for them.

We picked the kids up after school on Friday giving them 20 minutes or so to run around on the playground to work off some energy (we hoped).

I gave a little pep talk about how we were going to behave in the movie theater before going in and had to do a little intervention when one boy was using his regular voice but it's the kind of voice that knocks the wind out of you.

However, when the movie came on, the boys were perfect. I'm sure they think I'm a little nuts because that's all I could talk about the rest of the evening, "Wow, you guys were SO GOOD! I'm so impressed! Way to go! Wow!"

After the movie we headed back to our house for pizza or cake where I gave them a second set of rules for the dog, who was actually really okay with the chaos, I think because she realized in the chaos pizza was probably going to fall on the floor.

Adam's dad made the cake.

He said it's not his best work.

I wonder what his best work looks like because I was pretty impressed by this "sub-par" cake.

I made the banner using the font Cooper.

Because the card stock I had was scrapbook sized and too large for my printer I used a technique I learned in Mr Washington's 2D design class in college. The class I was really enthusiastic about until he hated every single thing I did. It was incredible and obviously not my forte.

First print your letters out in the size you'd like for your banner.

Flip the paper over and run a pencil over all the area of the letter outline.

My pencil kept breaking so I ended up using a crayon for the rest of the letters (and half of this one obviously).

Now flip your paper over and place it on the paper you're going to use to make your banner's letters. Trace over the letter's outline with a pen, pressing firmly.

Here's what you end up with, now cut around it.

I used a white crayon to trace the letters onto the darker color papers.

And as a reminder, here's how it turned out. I hung string along the window and tried to hang the letters with appropriate kerning. I had reasonable success with that.

The party was lovely and after the last guest left at 8:30, I laid down on the sofa and passed out. The great thing about having an after school party on a Friday is that when it's over, you've still got the rest of your weekend left. Perfect.

Pinewood Derby 2010

Monday night I went to Max's Cub Scout Pinewood Derby and it was fun to see the cars the kids (and their dads) came up with. But then around hour 8 and bad emcee joke number 237 things got a little Soul Sucking.

Logan and Max had a lot of fun designing their car this year. Max drew the design and they brainstormed ideas to make it look like a Hot Rod, or rather a Max Rod.

It was a pretty sweet car, the engine came from a model car kit. You can see his last two cars, here and here.

The emcee was telling jokes to try and keep the boys from becoming wild animals. A useless farce because putting boys together in the same room is like putting a bunch of puppies in a pen and trying to distract them with jokes.

Some of the kids started to stand in line to tell their own jokes as the event wore on and Logan came up with a really good one. I would have given him a trophy if he'd stood up and said it.

It goes like this: "A priest, a rabbi and a gay Cub Scout leader walk into a bar!"

No, that was the punchline. The Cub Scouts have a problem with the gays apparently. They confuse them with pedophiles so they're not allowed to be den leaders.

On the one hand that's really stupid and shitty. But listen, Logan's been a den leader for the last few years and if I were gay? I'd just leave that little injustice alone, it's for your own good.

The boys are wild animals. I'm surprised Logan hasn't been mauled yet. He's debated showing up to a meeting dressed like a woman just to convince the Pack he's actually gay and shouldn't be allowed around the children.

Max lost, which was a bummer. But then we got to leave in under 9 hours so it was sort of a blessing in disguise.

Parenting Fail.

Okay we're done throwing up. Logan once again avoided this illness sealing my long held belief that he is not human and sealing his long held belief that only assholes get sick.

I do a lot of comparing my life at the ages my children are to theirs right now. This is especially acute with Maddie because she's a girl and because she's so much like me.

In fourth grade I had started to do poorly in school. I stopped doing homework most of the time and signed the notes my teacher sent home to inform my parents. It got worse from there and I was barely passing most of my classes by the time I was in high school.

I've always berated myself for my poor performance in school. Once Maddie was in school I worried I would pass on my seriously terrible academic skills to her. So every year I've watched, wincing to see how she does.

I've been pretty fortunate with her, school has never been particularly difficult and when she struggled with math we got her a tutor and now she's an A student in that too. I've thankfully never had to model good work and study habits, which is good since I don't possess those. She just gets it. She rarely brings homework, she finishes it in spare moments through out the day. She furiously works to finish a project and then tells me, "Oh, it's not due until next week, I just wanted it off my plate."

Obviously not my kid, must be the robot DNA.

So I've become a little complacent with Max, assuming he also had the same internal drive to succeed. This is the first year homework has been any significant work for him and he's been pretty good at doing a piece of his homework package each night so he's not overwhelmed at the end of the week.

Of course this week he came home on Tuesday and said, "Oh yeah, my book report is due Thursday"

And I said, "Oh yeah? What book did you read?"

He hasn't picked a book yet, so that's lovely.

I don't want to be a helicopter parent, but I really dropped the ball here.

But I'm sure that robot gene will kick in any minute now, he'll read all night and create a video production and it'll be ready to go bright and early Thursday morning.

Halloween 2009: Bacon Edition

I kind of hate dressing up for Halloween. I know there are people who think I am "crafty" and that perhaps I "enjoy" making things, but this is generally untrue.

Generally I like things to be finished, so however I can get to "finished" as fast as possible is how I go.

I have friends who LOVE dressing up for Halloween, sometimes even throwing in an extra night of dressing up like we looked in the 80's. Except that of course they love this because these friends have had four kids and can still wear their prom dress.

I did not attend prom, my thigh might be able to wear a dress I would have worn to prom in the 80's and also I spent pretty much every day of the 80's thinking my life would always suck as badly as it did right then.

So, ahem, my friends and I are on different pages as far as dressing up in costume is concerned. They love it. I do not.

For the last 4 years I've managed to be something reasonably lame at the annual Halloween party. I slapped a mustache on one year, wore a bandit mask another, oh and there was that regrettable year I was what I like to call, "What was available one hour before the party began."

This year I had big plans to be bacon! I know everyone on the internet is So Over bacon but I live in the Midwest where everyone is just starting to "get" the bacon joke (and the mustache joke), so put a lid on it San Francisco.

I bookmarked this costume months ago and had every intention of amazing my friends with my magical full-on-effort-exerted costume. Until I priced the foam ($15 a YARD?) and started to read through the directions...at step 9 (of 17) I was out.

Like I said, I like things that are finished.

Instead Logan had a friend at work in possession of a Cookie Monster costume which I wore to the delight of my friends.

The costume was fine except that I was hot as hell and I nearly died of dehydration. I had to spend the entire night outside in the back yard trying not to pass out. (I hate Halloween.)

The only problem I was left with after that hot sweaty night proving to my friends that I don't ALWAYS have a lame costume, was that I told Madison she could be bacon after I was done with the costume and now there was no costume.

I procrastinated and thought about how I could get out of making a bacon costume. I tried to buy one but it was expensive and was really just a stupid bacon scarf. I just wanted it to be finished as that is the goal of all my projects. Done, quickly.

Finally, last week after we came home from our relaxing trip up north I braved the fabric store wearing full body armor. I hate the fabric store, I know I'm not alone because I saw the bodies of several small children laying in the aisles, dead, after waiting for their mothers to stop looking at fabric already.

I moved quickly locating red, pink and white felt. If you don't want to die at the fabric store you have to move.

I needed something to make the top of the bacon stay square but I was no way in hell going to buy a full suit of foam at $15 a yard. (Hate Halloween) So I found a square piece of foam that cost $10 (Stop taking my money Halloween) and took that.

I stood in line at the cutting table for 39 hours, when it was my turn I jammed the scissors into my eyeball and then asked for 4 yards of the red felt (eyeballing how tall I think Maddie is), 1 yard of the pink and a half yard of the white.

I didn't even take pictures of the process because I performed the task with such terrible haste and annoyance. But here's how I did it.

I traced around the back of Madison's head and cut a circle out of the foam square. I had her put her face inside the hole, draped the red felt over her making sure the felt covered just the back of her head and most of her front. I marked where to cut the face opening out of the red felt and I then stapled it into place.

The next day I made rough strips of white and pink and hot glued them to the front.

Maddie loved the costume mainly because everyone yelled, "HEY! It's Bacon!" at her as she trick or treated. People also said, "You just take whatever you want." from their bowls of candy because she was Bacon and people can't resist it. 

And best of all, it's finished.

Why I should have gone to bed at 5:30 last night

Yesterday evening around 4:45 I sat down to check email on my phone and fell into a 20 minute coma. It was really a nap but the nap was so delicious it felt like I imagine some controlled substances feel. When I woke up all I wanted to do was get back into that place, I suppose you could say I was feeling a little like a junkie, for sleep.

I couldn't go back to sleep however because it was Curriculum Night at Max's school. Curriculum Night is the night you hear about all the things your kid is going to do that year and then you feel the crushing guilt that comes when all your best pals are Super Mothers and you're hesitantly signing up to drive for a field trip here and there.

I tried to silence my guilt in a cup of coffee from McDonalds.

I often say things that don't make sense, this is one of the prime reasons I avoid the phone like it has syphilis. I just can't be sure what I'll say.

As I walked around the classroom last night to find Max's desk, I realized someone new was sitting in his spot. I thought it was odd and so I joked, 'Are you adopting Max?'

He realized his mistake, laughed and began to move across to his daughter's desk.

IT COULD HAVE ALL ENDED THERE.

I like to tease my mother about (a lot of things) how when there's nothing to say she fills the silence with what ends up being nonsense. Like, for example, this inexplicable conversation at a restaurant.

Browsing the menu together.
Her: "Hey, look Meliss'! Philly cheese steak!"
Me: "Yes...there it is."
(Note: I have never expressed any opinion about a philly cheese steak sandwich pro or against.)

It would appear I have inherited this desire to fill silence with words and I have the added skill of making everything really awkward.

As the innocent father in this story moved to his own seat, I added, "Ha ha! I thought for a minute Max had a new dad and I was like, Yay!"

???????????????????????????

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay so either worst pick up line, ever, ("I'm looking for a new baby daddy.") or I just implied I don't like my kid.

Both just excellent!

Obviously I should have just gone to bed.

growing up

School so far has been going okay. 

Max, I've noticed, is fine as he gets used to school, he just rolls along and doesn't really think too hard about what's different and what's the same. Even riding the bus, something he didn't really want to do this year by himself, he's kind of just accepted he's going to be on the bus and that's that.

His problems come later when he gets overwhelmed by a particular project and spends an hour at bedtime sounding like a mammal in some terrifying mating season call. But let's not even worry about that now.

Madison, shocked me after her first day at school. Going into the building without wrapping herself around my head and grabbing onto my brain stem for dear life. You know, that's progress. Still I worried a little throughout that day. I just wondered how awful pick up would be.

She was happy at pick up. She said "I only got lost once." "Someone liked my shirt." "I felt so popular seeing all my old friends!" (From the elementary school we attended before we moved).

We walked home that day and I floated home above her and she held a string tied to my ankle so my joy, relief and pride wouldn't shoot me right into foreign airspace.

She teased Logan when he called to see how it went, "Well, it was awful. I hate it. I never want to go back." Then, after a pause, "No! I loved it."

We made a fatal mistake that night.

We put her to bed. Where her brain could think about what could go wrong. 

All the things you remember about middle school. Do you remember middle school as clearly as I do? I wasn't normal of course, but everyone I talk to has at least a couple of stories about the terror of getting lost, not remembering their combination, the thrill and the terror of all this new independence.

To avoid all of this we should have given her a little cocaine so her brain would never slow down. She'd have gone to bed last night thinking, "I'm in a whole other amazing dimension and it's sparkly and full of pulsing light."

Yes I realize that's weird but come on. The tears....they're heartbreaking.

Last night Maddie asked, "You know, I just don't understand why you can't just have the same teacher all day in middle school? Or at least have them walk you to your next class?"

And we said, "But this is independence. This is your first chance to be a little more grown up. To try different classes and to learn even more about every subject."

"But it's really hard to get used to."

Today I was running late after having lunch with a reader in Toledo, (Hey! Staci!) so I asked a friend to pick Maddie up at the school.

When Maddie didn't see me or my friend, she decided to start walking home by herself. It's very close and that's the plan eventually, to have her walk. But we didn't want to push it.

When she walked up to the house she said, 'I walked home all by myself, can you believe I didn't freak out? I feel so grown up!"

Then later, "I was thinking I'd take that dollar you gave me to use at lunch and get ice cream on my way home. Can I do that next time?"

Yes you can baby girl. Yes you can.

Not really naked but the point is I could be.

All summer long people asked me, "Oh boy! Middle school! Are you nervous?"

And I laughed and said, "I'm about to kill my kids, that's all I'm nervous about."

This morning I woke up and a wave of totally unexpected anxiety washed over me.

I don't typically indulge in a lot of "MY Bayyyyy-Beeeee" stuff but.

My Baby! Is in middle school!

So it was a momentous occasion dropping her off. She's struggled with school anxiety for most of her life and this year was of course no exception. Her best friend from preschool is at her school for the first time since they were 4 so that helped ease things and unlike years past we didn't have to surgically remove her from my head.

She had decided she wasn't going to cry, it's middle school MOTHER.

I watched her face, knowing exactly how those gears were shifting in her head. "I don't want to do this. I am going to do this. I don't want to do this. I am going to do this."

I know exactly how she's feeling....and I'm surprised how hard it is to watch.

I mean it's hard, even though I'm sitting here in my living room naked eating all the cookies out of the cookie jar.

Vocabulary Test

We grew up in the kind of neighborhood we lived in last year. Where there were always kids running around, your neighbors had a key to your house and everybody was happy to help you watch your kids. So sometimes I'd head down to the neighbors house down the street.

I've mentioned these neighbors in the past, the Hippies everyone called them. Would you like to know why?

She breastfed, didn't smoke in the house and they made her kids wear seat belts in the car, unlike everyone else who would literally let us try to "surf" in the back of a conversion van or sit in the front seat on the arm rest so in case we were in an accident we could be easily ejected through the windshield.

I BET THEY DIDN'T DRINK AND DRIVE EITHER.

Hippies.

So one day when I'm 4-ish my mom leaves me at this neighbor's house, in spite of their really wacky lifestyle, and runs out to do errands or smoke crack in my baby sister's face or something normal like that. 

While she's out, the neighbor calls my mother and says, "Something's just not right with Melissa today."

My mother asked for more information, "Is she sick?"

"Well no, it's not that. She just doesn't seem herself. She has a touch of melancholia."

I know my mother is the butt of a lot of my jokes and I accept that someday I will be the butt of Maddie's jokes. But my mother is a reasonably intelligent woman who maybe didn't have a huge vocabulary back in the 70's. 

I don't know what my mother thought I had, she didn't know exactly what melancholia was but it sounded a little like cholera or melonoma so she raced home to pick me up from our neighbor's house ready to rush me off to the ER or call an ambulance if that's what it took to save me from this horrible illness.

She arrived terrified and breathless, with my sister strapped to the roof of the car (she wasn't a hippy). She raced into the house to evaluate the situation and found me sitting on the sofa, quietly.

"Does she have a fever?"

"No, she just seems a little quiet today."

"Wait, you called me because my kid was quiet?"

Fucking hippies.

Cottage Vacation

We went up north last weekend with my good friend Leslie, her husband Tom and their four kids. Leslie and I headed out on Wednesday with all the kids and Logan and Tom drove up the next night after work. We decided to go up on Wednesday as early as possible so we could enjoy the beach because...of course...it rained the rest of the weekend.

So we spent several hours at the beach at a nearby state park. We also had ice cream.

Leslie has four kids 8,7,5 and 4 and her life, I learned after our weekend together, consists of a lot of tattling, time outs, preparing meals and cleaning up after meals.

I know we all knew this already but I'm a parenting wimp and watching what Leslie's day is like every day...yeah I just don't know how you do that and don't kill anyone. Then again most people aren't as tightly wound as me.

Here's a helpful tip I learned from Leslie and you guys, it's crazy how this works. Well it at least saves you from having to intervene in 482 altercations a day between your four kids.

Kid: "So and so took my shovel!"

Leslie: "So tell him not to do that."

Kid: "Okay"

And that's it...it happened over and over again and every time I was in awe.

The second day we were there, it rained (of course because that's what happens to us when we plan fun outings) so we put the kids in the car and drove up to Gaylord to see dead animals at Call Of The Wild. I know you're jealous.

Luckily the rain stopped but it stayed cold so we were able to have campfires and when the dads arrived we let them be in charge of making smores. Leslie channeled her inner Pioneer Sister Wife and started the fire before they got up there. I sat...on my ass.

The next morning Logan made all the kids into Burritos.

Here's another thing about having 6 kids running around. When you do something fun with one? Pretty soon you've got an hour or three of "Do It To Me Now!" "It's My Turn!" "Me Next" coming at you.

At least they were cute burritos.

The next day the dads took the kids fishing and Leslie built a barn out in the backyard while I sat on my ass. I'm the worst Sister Wife Ever.

Ironically the smallest fisherman caught the biggest fish.

Maddie, oh Maddie....is cursed by being the oldest of all my closest friend's kids. So she is often stuck at parties with 3-5 preschoolers stuck to her legs and she's not exactly a fan of being the idol of all the little kids. So she was somewhat dreading this weekend. 

She just sort of sucked it up and suffered through.

I felt terrible for her and all the suffering she did.

I just hope next year she has a tiny bit more fun.

Peace Maker

As usual, spending all day every day with the kids is getting old. What am I saying it was old when it started...so I should say it continues to be old.

Doing fun things with them works out well, who doesn't like a day at the pool? Or a trip to the zoo? Or a playdate with friends? But when we're doing boring things I usually do when they're not around, like go to the market or balance my checkbook, things tend to get a little less than pleasant.

Maddie has a list of things she would like to have. RIGHT NOW. This list is comically full and it grows and grows by the second, especially if you enter a Target with her. The nice thing is the things on her list of things she NEEDS TO HAVE RIGHT NOW very rarely coincides with the things that are on my list of things I'm planning to buy right now.

I also tend to be skeptical of the things on her list of "needs" because they tend to coincide with whatever is right in front of her face at any given moment. "I need a new pair of shoes....More socks....A hot glue gun.....a lamp for my room....a rug...a new beach towel....this book! A magazine! A game! A belt sander!"

On this particular shopping trip a week or so ago I was amazed by the stream of things coming out of her mouth. I started to make mental bets on what she'd ask for next. It was incredible.

My friend was once a nanny for a family who asked her to limit saying "No" to their child to 7 times a day. 

I say no to my kids more than 7 times before getting out of bed in the morning. But on this trip to the market I was racking up enough "No's" to cover about a year of "No's" for that family.

Madison was getting pretty annoyed with my love of the word no on this trip through Target and I was getting pretty annoyed with her list of "Needs". Sometimes Maddie and I get a little....unpleasant when we're in a situation like this.

Maddie likes to needle and I like to become 11 and the result is frighteningly immature and stupid.

"You know what Mom? I don't think you even care about the things I need. I don't think you even love me."

"Hmm...interesting."

"Yeah and you know what? If you had a yearbook you know what I'd write in it? 'You were really mean to me all year! Thanks for caring about what I need.'"

"Oh, well you know what I'd write in your yearbook, 'Sorry you never appreciated the things you have!' "

"Guess what else I'd write? 'You are the meanest mother in the whole world.' "

"Oh really? Because guess what I'd write? ....."

Suddenly Max, who'd been walking in between us quietly listening to this ridiculous conversation, put his arms up to the sides and says,

"Ladies, ladies....how about if nobody writes anything in anybody's yearbook. Okay?"

The voice of reason from my 8 year old. Nice.

First Piece Of Mother Daughter Advice.

The other day I had to take my car into the shop. You see, we decided to go to one car to save some money and in the spirit of my shitty luck, the car has been in the shop more times than in the entire four years we've owned the thing.

In a span of 25 minutes I drove the car into town, dropped it off, walked back home, collected the kids, forced Maddie to ride her bike and rode over to the dentist office for the kid's cleanings.

I don't own a bike, unfortunately, so I have to ride Logan's bike. Logan's bike is sized perfectly for a man about 6 feet tall. I am not a man and I'm a lot shorter than 6 feet. There's also an unfortunately placed bar on Logan's bike and when I stop, I can just barely touch my toe to the ground. 

I have to, very gingerly, slide off the seat without running into the unfortunately placed bar.

I was in a bit of a hurry at that point so we wouldn't be late and had to wear what I'd been wearing. A skirt.

We made it to the dentist and back home without incident.

A day or two later Maddie says, casually, "The other day when we rode our bikes home from the dentist? Your underwear was showing."

!!!!!

"Did you think about, I don't know, MENTIONING that to me while we rode?"

"I didn't want you to be embarrassed."

....

"Okay Maddie, I'm going to give you some advice. As a woman, it's sort of a rule, if there's toilet paper on a shoe, a piece of food in a tooth, OR UNDERWEAR SHOWING you always tell. Because that's the only way to get into heaven."

Another item checked off my life list. "Give Maddie words of wisdom she'll always remember."

Fake It Till You Make It.

Okay so most of us are in agreement, entertaining kids for 12 weeks straight is kind of a drag and some of us really love all those weeks and want more and then others of us would like you to know that you shouldn't have even HAD CHILDREN AT ALL if you weren't going to love every second of summer break.

Let me tell you this. I didn't know I wouldn't like summer break when I had them. I swear! If I'd known I would have ripped my ovaries out and worn them around my neck to drive potential mates away. But here I am, on summer break, and you know the kids realize this isn't my favorite time of year. They know I feel guilty about working when they're bored.

So, let's just make the best of this. You either cheer on my efforts and commiserate or (quietly) judge me (when you're not busy soaking up all the summer fun). Wooo!

The kids are hardly in purgatory over here. They've played with friends, gone to a Tigers game, spent the day at the beach and gone to a movie. And we're just 6 days in.

Imagine what can happen for the next 2.3 months! We'll probably be having tea parties and craft fairs by the end of the summer!

On Friday night we went to the Tigers game with a bunch of other families.

Between all of us we have 14 kids, not quite the Duggars but still a spectacular sight in my kitchen.

The weather report called for rain pretty much every hour with a varying 'chance of' percent of between 50% and "My Goodness You Are Screwed"-% and sure enough about an hour or two into the game the sprinkles turned to full blown rain and then lightening and thunder. The stands cleared out pretty quickly and our enormous group met in the hall.

We decided to make our way out of the stadium, with about 1 billion other people. From where I walked through the insane crowd I could see Logan, Max and Maddie, my friend's son Daniel and my friend Leslie and her little girl. Logan had my friend's four year old on his shoulders. I kept count of my two kids and my other friends son.

A few times Daniel looked back, wondering where his mom and dad were, but being pushed along in the crowd there was no way to find them without possibly getting lost. So I told him to keep walking with us and once we were out of the stadium we'd find his parents.

As we made it out of the stadium into the street, I had this sudden feeling of comfort, knowing that I have the kinds of friends who trust us to keep their kids safe. Even if I didn't have my own kids in sight, I'd know my friends have them and are bringing them up behind us.

Parenting as a village task is something amazing.

Here we go again....

Today was my last day of freedom before summer vacation.

I think those of us who have glimpsed the horror that is me during summer vacation understand why this is momentous.

Yes, I'm planning some things to do with the kids. Yes, they're older now and easier. Yes, I know this isn't my most becoming trait.

But I didn't wear black all week with a veil to cover my grieving face. I didn't plant a faux grave in the front yard with a headstone reading: 'My Freedom' and spend a couple of hours crying over it. I also didn't make a paper chain symbolizing every day of summer vacation we have to get through...or...."enjoy".

I think I deserve credit. (I may still make the paper chain later...but I promise I'll keep it under my bed so the kids don't know I'm counting down to the first day of school.

Summer is one of those times I wish I was that other kind of parent.

I am not the kind of parent who enjoys summer vacation. Though I will enjoy the break from making Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches every single morning for Maddie.

That feeling will probably last 2-3 days.

Then I'll be back to wondering how I'm going to burn 30-40 hours of daylight. About 30% of those hours will be spent berating myself for not being that other kind of parent. So that's something "pleasant".

Tomorrow morning Maddie "graduates" from elementary school. On a walk today to get dinner, just the two of us, she asked me if I was going to cry at the ceremony or feel sad.

I told her no, I didn't think so. I told her how, in every stage of her life so far, from the time she was a tiny baby, I've been excited to see what comes next. I've tried to enjoy every stage we've gone through (some I've enjoyed more than others) and I haven't clung to any of the stages she's gone through.

As her mom I get to experience all these new things with her. I got to see what It was like to be pregnant with her. I got to see what it's like to have a baby who crawls. I got to see what it was like to throw a birthday party for a one year old. I got to see what it was like to take my little girl to school for the first time.

Everything I've done as a mother I've gotten to do with her first. I'm excited to see what it's like to watch my baby graduate from elementary school tomorrow. And I'm excited to watch her go on to middle school.

And I'm really excited to see how we make it through summer vacation in one piece.

Nighttime Parenting

Oh...hey, I have a blog?

I know I talk a lot about how I'm a really not great mom, but rather a perfectly acceptable mother. For the most part that's true, but I do think I nail a lot of the really important things on the head and then some of the other things I sort of....miss the mark on.

One of these things is Nighttime Parenting, a term I first came across while reading a Doctor Sears book where he stated, with a straight face, that 3 consecutive hours of sleep was considered "Sleeping Through The Night."

Three hours of sleep is not a night of rest, unless you're a robot and your name is Logan.

I am perfectly willing to admit in this public forum that I am an atrocious nighttime parent. It's one of the main reasons we decided to stop having babies after the second one who required a lot of nighttime parenting in the form of finding his God Damned Binky three or 4000 times a night.

I just don't feel like I'm the best parent I can be when I'm in the dark, crawling under a crib to retrieve 10 binkies and debating how terrible it would be to duct tape the stupid pacifier in to my beautiful son's mouth. Ha ha ha, I wouldn't really duct tape the binkies into his cry-hole. I'd only use band aids! (or super glue....)

The other night at 3am, Max came into my room, crying a little because he couldn't fall back asleep. So I explained that the only way to fall back asleep is to lay down and close your eyes and relax. (See, terrible nightime parent!)

But it could be worse, as it always can.

As a kid I used to have trouble sleeping in the night, I'd often have growing pains in my legs. My parents were also pretty bad nighttime parents (never mind the regular parenting...) and would tell me to "go walk around the coffee table until your legs don't hurt". So there I'd be for an hour or two in the middle of the night walking in circles around the coffee table until my leg still hurt but I was too tired to keep walking around the table and I'd go to bed.

So Max went back to his bed and proceeded to make the sound of a dying goat, the one he's made before. The one that makes me want to kill innocent puppies. Punch babies in the mouth. And burn my uterus in effigy. That sound is unpleasant at any time but especially at 4am.

I talked him down, pointing out that NO ONE CAN SLEEP when you make that horrible sound with your mouth. So try not making that sound and see if that helps your sleep situation.

But that's the problem with the goat sound he makes, he can't stop once he starts. So about 25 minutes into trying to talk him down off the ledge I gave up and said something along the lines of, "Fine! Lay in here and cry I guess because I don't know what to tell you!"

Excellent nighttime parenting. I could have maybe trumped myself by suggesting he pack his things and leave immediately which would have been helpful.

Luckily I'm not doing this whole parenting thing alone so Logan took over and got him to simmer down after 15 more minutes of explaining that sleep and bleating don't go together.

Maddie often tallies up the Favorite Kid score. She worries Max will win because she and I butt heads on just about everything. Like for example how she eats pizza, with cheese and tomato sauce, but refuses to accept pasta with cheese and tomato sauce as something edible.

The thing is Max will never be my favorite because of the nighttime parenting.

I guess they'll both have to be on equal footing.

Handing down traditions.

A few weeks ago I told the kids about how my siblings and I really liked to scare their grandmother half to death when we were kids. Specifically the time we put a rubber snake in the microwave and watched her throw herself through a plate glass window.

Oh boy that made an impression and ever since they've been wondering when Grandma will be coming to babysit. They came up with an elaborate plan to scare her with "something" in the microwave.  They practiced how they'd casually ask her to make some popcorn. It was agreed that Maddie would do the talking because, when they practiced, Max was unable to stop smiling when he said it. And that would give it all away.

Finally, yesterday Logan and I had plans to go out for drinks in Royal Oak. It was the perfect day for going out, the weather was perfect. I worked hard to look less suburban mother-ish. We ate sushi at Ronin where all the windows open onto the street. It was idyllic.

While we fed the kids dinner we sat on the deck and told the kids Grandma was finally coming over to babysit. And finally their evil plot could happen! They searched their toys for a rubber snake but we don't seem to have one. So instead they found a two foot long rubber shark.

And you can imagine how terrifying that would be. You mosey over to the microwave to pop a bag of popcorn, not suspecting a thing. You open the door, and

"OH MY GOD IT'S A LAND LOCKED SALTWATER FISH IN MY MICHIGAN BASED MICROWAVE!!!!"

I'm sure her hair will turn bone white!

So as we sat there Maddie did her thing. You know, her "thing" she inherited from me. Where she runs through all possible scenarios and particularly focuses on the Worst Case Scenario.

"Okay, so what if she opens the microwave and we give her a heart attack? Should I call you, or 911?"

"If she falls back and hits her head, do I just give her ice?"

"What if she is so scared she leaves, should we call you?"

So we assured her nothing was going to happen like that. That when I said Grandma threw herself through a plate glass window I was using hyperbole.

I guess grandma arrived after we left and wanted to take the kids out for ice cream. Which threw a dent in the plan because when faced with Ice Cream or Popcorn that would scare grandma half to death, they had to go with ice cream.

But not wanting to give up on the terror, Max suggested, "How about if we get ice cream but you look in the microwave before we leave?"

And Maddie rolled her eyes and grandma was maybe a little surprised to see a shark in the microwave.
But thankfully, no one had to call 911 and we didn't have to cut our night short.

The Badger Dance

I thought for Christmas it would be fun to get a Flip camera for the family. I thought we'd all enjoy having digital video capability, and at the price I'd let the kids run around with the camera.

Some weird stuff has come into the house since then.

The tiny version of me, without the childhood trauma.

We're on the tram at the airport. Maddie hops on and grabs the pole in the middle. Then tells Max to move to the middle. No, not there. Stand here Max. She needs to be sure he's in a good, safe spot. "Thank you Mini Mom," I say.

It's 6am, we're scheduled for breakfast at 9am. Maddie calls out from the other room, "I think we should really get up now so we're not late." I tell her I have my alarm set, we'll have plenty of time if we get up at 8am. Go back to sleep I'm taking care of you.

We're walking around Georgetown, waiting for our car to arrive to take us home. I have the GPS on my phone set up so we don't get lost. Maddie is very worried with every block we take. I tell her I know exactly where we are. She acts shocked when the hotel is exactly where I said it would be.

I suggest we all try going to the bathroom before the plane starts loading. Max says he doesn't need to go, Maddie tells him he really should try. "I'll hold your backpack for you."

Our seat assignments are not together. There's a stranger sitting between Maddie and Max and I'm a few rows up in the window seat. I assure Maddie the stranger will switch seats with me, don't worry. But ha, of course she worries. We talk to the attendant at the desk about our seats, asking if we can switch. She calls the name of the man sitting between the kids and we wait for him. After about 5 minutes she says, "You know what? If he's not happy switching seats, he's probably a pedophile so let's just go ahead and make the switch." Maddie says, as we walk away, "What's a pedophile?"

We're sitting on the floor together eating candy and waiting for our turn to board the plane. Maddie and I are laughing about her worries. She says, 'I think I have a disease of worrying."

I tell her about the medicine I take every day to help me with my worrying. How I worried a lot as a kid too. I worried about my sister, I worried about something bad happening if I wasn't at home to keep it from happening. I worried about school.

She says, "Wow, you worried a lot. I don't worry that much. But I do worry a lot. Maybe I should take that medicine."

I tell her that her body and her brain is changing all the time, that who she is today isn't who she's always going to be. I remind her how going into the school every day used to be too hard for her, and now she never has a problem. She says how she was so worried about riding the bus but she just kept telling herself it would be okay. And it was.

Maybe some day you'll decide with a doctor that taking some medicine will help your brain work differently but for now she's doing great.

She says, "Yeah, and I'm not even afraid to talk on the phone.....like some people."

Sex Ed, With Mimes!

I've always made it a goal to not have "funny" words for our sexual organs. I called a penis a penis, and a vagina a vagina and I realize we're really talking about the labia, I simplified.

I thought if I did this from the time my kid's were little they'd never think those words were "weird" or "gross" or "silly".

Of course, when Maddie was 2 we brought Max home from the hospital and gave him a bath. She noticed his penis and asked "What's that?"

I told her, "That's Max's penis, boys have them." (See, nonchalant! My face didn't turn red or anything. Parenting A!)

She said, "Oh, a peanut. Max has a peanut."

"No, it's a penis."

"I SAID IT'S A PEANUT! It's a peanut right mommy?"

Okay.....

Even vagina was changed into acceptable speak for Maddie, as an 18 month old I'd narrate how we were getting her whole body clean in the bath and we'd wash her hair and her face and her belly and her hands and her bottom and her vagina....."Mommy that's my mygina"

"It's actually called a Va-gina."

"I SAID IT'S MYGINA! It's mygina right mommy?"

Okay....

Mostly I just wanted the kids to know that their bodies are theirs and no one is allowed to touch them or make them feel bad in any way. So if that means renaming parts of their body to make them okay, then fine! You can can have linguistic control over your anatomy as well. Girl Power!

Still now I have a 10.5 year old daughter and it's kind of time for "The Talk", in even it's most vague forms because I always thought we'd have an open dialogue about these things. That Maddie wouldn't be at school in 8th grade where a boy asks, 'Do you know what a blow job is?" and she says, "I don't know, something with fixing fans? Or, oh I know! Glass blowing." (Not that I know anything about that.)

The problem is if you say certain words in front of Maddie she dies, comes back to life and dies again:

Here is a partial list.

Another Eighth Birthday

Max turned eight on Friday, we celebrated by welcoming a few wild animals to stay in our house. Now, alone these creatures are just regular boys but my God you put them together? They become giant sticks of dynamite.

Dynamite that makes farting sounds.

Our birthday celebrations have become a lot less elaborate since my kids were babies. I should do something about it, but....enh. Maybe next year.

The last part of this post is not true, but man, I wish it was.

When I arrived back home after dropping the kids at school this morning, I plopped myself down on the sofa and let out a long sigh of contentment. Gary, the fat one, looked over at me and said, "I know what you mean."

We high fived and he took a nap, the first quiet nap he's had in the last 9 days.

It's 9:30 in the morning and the nice thing is my day is only going to get better than it has been since I woke up at 7am.

Max does this charming thing where he decides he doesn't want to go to school. It starts out as grumbling, "You know, I'm not a big fan of the school thing...." Then, when I tell him, "I know, but everyone has to go to school." He moves along to the more dramatic, "I hate school and whoever invented it should burn in the fiery depths of hell."

When that doesn't clue me into how serious he is, he begins making a terrible sound with his mouth. I would rather listen to a dying goat than my son making that sound with his mouth. And at 7:30 in the morning, that sound makes me want to hurl myself out the second story window.

After telling him he was going to school, sounding like a keening elephant and wearing his pajamas, please, feel free. But buddy, we've had 8 full days of intense togetherness and you are going to school today. I'll take you there naked if I have to.

In the end it took two threatening phone calls from Logan and a "call" to the "principal" to get the dying elephant out of bed and to the car. He was wearing clothes, thankfully, but was making that terrible sound with his mouth for almost the entire drive.

He got out of the car and grumbled his way over to the school.

Maddie is a safety squad kid, this means she helps kids safely cross the street using the power of anxiety. It's like a superpower.

So she watches for cars, makes sure no one is turning left off the busy main road onto the side street and starts making the "Go On!" sign with her hands. Max begins crossing the street, floating across on the power of Madison's anxiety.

And just as he's crossing someone comes barreling down the main road and starts turning left onto the side street, trying to miss the oncoming traffic.

Luckily Maddie's anxiety, stopped the car from running over the kids in the crosswalk. But while the man in the car waited for the kids to get out of the crosswalk he stopped oncoming traffic and wildly gestured and yelled inside his car at the kids in the crosswalk. Because they had the nerve....to cross...the street....to get to school....

And something inside of me broke right then.

I stepped on the gas, chased the man down the street, pulled up right next to him and made ferocious eye contact. Then! I pulled the wheel over and rammed my car into his, knocking him off the road. I pulled him from his car, and very reasonably explained that pedestrians have the right of way, and if you're driving around a school around drop off time, you should really try to be aware and patient about getting around...so you know, you don't kill a child.

Then I stood there and made the noise Max likes to make with his mouth at him, until he cried and begged for mercy and promised to never try to run little kids over in the cross walk ever again. But I kept right on bleating like a goat at his head. Until Max came running over from the school and said, "Oh My God that is the most annoying sound on earth. Please, please stop."

My work there was done.

Daddy Daughter Dance 2009

Last year I was in Portland with Maggie when Logan and Maddie had their dance, a sock hop, and so, sadly, no pictures.

Considering the father I grew up with, these father daughter events have a special meaning. Even if Logan is "so embarrassing..."

I'll give Maddie that he's a really bad dancer, but what he lacks in skill he makes up for with enthusiasm.

2009

2007

2006

Reuse: How To Make A Doorstop or Bookend Out Of A Stuffed Animal

When I was pregnant with Maddie I bought a Max The Bunny stuffed animal and pretty much every Rosemary Wells Max the Bunny book I could get my hands on. I was pretty much convinced Maddie was a boy when I was pregnant and we'd decided to name him Max.

I believed she was a boy mostly because I wanted a girl very badly and back then I had a belief that what I wanted would never happen.

When Maddie was born, well, we had a lot of Max stuff laying around.

About two years later, Max arrived and the Max the Bunny stuff became more meaningful again. Except, it seems like Max always knew we didn't buy the Max Bunny for him specifically, it was more for the idea of him that turned out to be Maddie.

So he never took a strong liking to the bunny I thought should be his comfort object.

I have a strong loathing of stuffed animals. They are promiscuous little things that sit around and multiply. Every year I have the kids do a one-for-one clear out of their stuffed animal baskets. They get one, they put one in the pile to give away.

Max the Bunny always ends up in the Give Away pile but somehow sneakily makes it back in the house. I can't get rid of Max the Bunny. He's not Max's comfort object but he's mine.

So I decided to put him to work. Max's door doesn't stay open, we called the landlord about it but he said to use Common Sense and stand in front of the door to keep it open. (Kidding. Didn't call him! But wanted to!)

I read an idea in Real Simple and decided to try it out. I transformed Max the Bunny from a good for nothing stuffed animal who lays around all day reproducing and collecting dust. Into a door stop (or a bookend) using dried beans, thread and a needle.

Here is Max The Bunny. (Pardon the light in these pictures. It's winter now, we get 2 hours of daylight a day.)

Here are the pinto beans. I bought a huge bag and I'm not sure what I was thinking.

I used a seam ripper to open up the back of Max. A seam ripper is the thing you use when you screw up your sewing project and undo the stitching you did wrong. Use it with plenty of shits and dammits. (If your kid really loved this stuffed animal, you may want to not have them in the room for the unstuffing.)

Here he is deflated. Poor Max.

Here he is full of beans.

I sewed him up using an invisible stitch I learned in knitting class.

May I get the door for you?

Now Max the bunny has a JOB. Which is more than we can say for the cats.

=========================

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving everyone! I've been planning what I'd eat since my tonsillectomy. I can't wait to get started!

*I did my best, but the Velveeta Challenge winner was My Wooden Spoon who gave away prizes to get people to vote. I thought about voting for her myself hoping to win the Kitchenaid Appliance of my choice. Oh well. Congratulations to her!

How to: Halloween Boo.

I wrote about the Halloween Boo or Halloween Ghosting tradition last year. It's a fun little thing neighborhoods that like to create a sense of community do. Someone secretly leaves a little treat on your porch, with a poem and a sign to hang in your door. When you're Boo'd you then do the same at two other houses. Those people do the same at two more houses and pretty soon almost everyone in your neighborhood have "Boo" signs in their windows.

In our neighborhood there's one family who puts a sign that reads, "Jesus is the only Holy Ghost in this house."

Which says to everyone, "We don't want to have fun with you!"

This is kind of like an annoying chain letter. Except if you find it annoying, you should really not live in the suburbs. I don't find this tradition annoying at all and I shouldn't live in the suburbs.

If you don't live in a neighborhood you like, as we did for the first 8 years of Maddie's life, you can also follow Skip To My Lou's example and just boo people you know, in any neighborhood you feel like.

That sounds like fun, just dropping treats off at a random person's door. A lot like putting money in the meter next to you when the Parking Police are coming up their expired meter.

Last year I sent candy, Littlest Pet Shop toys and Dora Band Aids to our recipients. This year I saw a funny idea in Cookie Magazine (or maybe Parents, I can't find any reference online....but I read it at the dentist office anyway).

I set out on a journey to find black decorating sugar (check), Halloween cupcake paper liners (check) and hands one uses to make dolls. The doll hands turned out to be a little difficult to find locally. Actually they're not that easy to find online either, not for super cheap.

I ended up at the dollar store buying three $1 baby dolls and removing their hands. This didn't strike me as disturbing until I saw the picture I posted on Flickr. But hey, it's Halloween and it's supposed to be creepy.

I ended up with enough hands to Boo two houses. I put them through the dishwasher and then kept them in a bowl, (only for two days....seriously...it would have been less but Logan took the camera to work and forgot it over the weekend). And now looking at it, is also a little creepy. But hey! It's Halloween!

So I made a batch of cupcakes. I put them in these lovely boxes with labels and ribbon.

The boxes are from Michael's and so are the labels, although those are from the Martha collection.

Here is a close up of one of the labels. That's my handwriting, with less scribbling than usual.

On top, you ask? It's the note....it's coming (down below).

Inside the package was the really spooky stuff though.

Whoa. Spooky!

Here they are in all their spooky glory.....spooooky.....

Then here it is solo.

Scary. Getting these cupcakes would totally freak your shit out, right? You'd be all, "Oh My GOD!!!! Tiny hands emerging from delicious chocolate baked goods (WITH SPRINKLES!!!!)."

And then you'd eat the cupcake, leaving the hands behind. And they'd come alive in the night, crawling up the stairs to tickle you. OR KILL YOU.

This is scary stuff and that's why we chose to boo two families in our neighborhood with grown up kids. Little kids can't handle baby hands crawling up the stairs to tickle torture them.

 

Here are the Halloween Boo pages I attached to the packages. Feel free to use them to start your own Halloween Boo in your neighborhood.

This PDF includes the note explaining what it is, along with the sign you hang in your window so no one sends you more creepy cupcakes with hands coming out of them. (Download PDF here)

Swelling

This is the seventh day Maddie has had a fever. She has a rash that comes and goes with a dose of medicine. We've seen the doctor twice and are assured this is something "Viral" and we should wait it out.

I love my daughter but right now she's staring at me as I type and is also trying to tap random keys because she's bored. 

Seven days is a lot of days to be stuck on the sofa with your mom.

Seven days is a lot of days to be stuck on the sofa with your kid.

School has been in session for 10 days.
Maddie has been at school for 5 of those days.

These are not terrific odds for an Ivy League future. Also not terrific odds for the various plans I have for my child-free days. Like eating frosting out of the jar in my pajamas.

In other news my birthday was Friday and the day started out, you know, not good. I walked Max to school, since Maddie was staying home again, and the crossing guard suggested we'd woken up late. I thought because of my crazy morning pre-workout/shower hair, but no, she cheerfully told me it was because of my swollen eyes.

Oh-HO! No, I wanted to tell her, my eyes are not swollen because I just woke up. They're swollen because I went to bed crying and woke up crying and pretty much right now? You're making me want to cry. My birthday was preceded by some (unspoken) unpleasantness.

So I walked home with my swollen eyes, and as I came up the driveway I found three dead mice Gary appeared to have left me as a little birthday surprise. Isn't that nice? Too bad I didn't notice the fourth one until after I'd run it over with the car later in the day. Because that was a pretty unique way to say "Happy Birthday!"

But then I went to pick up Logan at the airport from his 9/11 overnight trip into hurricane country. The trip, given my bad day on Thursday, I was really convinced could only end in some unimaginable tragedy...just so my eyes would never stop being swollen.

But instead his flight got in on time and he'd set up a surprise sitter and slowly I realized all my favorite friends didn't just happen to be in a bar in downtown Detroit.

It was a good night, and exactly what I needed.
And when it was over, my eyes weren't swollen anymore.

Hey, wait....you mean my daughter has anxiety issues? What?

Gee, where have I been?

Oh you know, sitting around feeling anxious and worried about my daughter's anxiety and panic attacks!

Weeee!

A week ago we were sitting outside having an end of the year bar-b-que and I noted how shocked I was at the early darkness. You know, since it's almost fall and in Michigan we have something called "Seasons". My friend Laura remarked how every year in Michigan we all forget about what it was like before. Like we forget it gets darker earlier as fall approaches. And...

"Oh God! The leaves are falling out of the trees?"
"What the hell is this white stuff falling out of the sky?"
"How do I drive in the snow again? AHHHHHHHHHHHH!"  As the car spins off a cliff.

I bring this up because that's how I feel every year as we start school. The first day Maddie is all smiles and I think to myself. Hey! We finally outgrew the stage where I have to surgically remove my daughter from around my head to get her into the school building.

Then on the second day....I'm all, "What the hell? I thought we outgrew this!?" Even though for the last 7 years I've been dropping Maddie off at a class-like setting I've had to surgically remove her from my head for at least the first week of school.

I'm trying to give her tools to deal with her anxiety but short of a shot of bourbon before we start the death march to school, I'm really not coming up with much that seems to make a difference.

I guess time is the only thing.

Amusingly, today I intended to leave Maddie at her Safety Crossing Post to walk Max over to his teacher. You know, since he's seven years old.

Instead, while trying to surgically remove Maddie from my head, Max marched ahead and walked all the way to his class door before I could even get Maddie off my head.

Please don't misinterpret this as lack of empathy, or even lack of understanding.

I mean the summer before I started sixth grade I cried daily after school. Especially when the Citrus Hill Select orange juice commercial would come on. In fact I can still make myself cry when I hum the little tune.

"Citrus Hill Select. Gets your juices flooowing! [Faster] Citrus Hill Select! Gets your juices flowING!"

It's like a Pavlovian Anxiety attack.

I get it. I know it's hard. I know she hates it. I have the surgical scars around my head to remind me how much she hates it.

I also know only time will make this tolerable for both of us. But until then, I pretty much feel like throwing up.

Well I feel like throwing up when I'm not reveling in all this FREEDOM! 35 hours a week of guilt-free time to myself to do the things I love.

I just have to get her through the first few weeks of this insanity.

Still, Mostly Fun and Games.

Yesterday I had to send out my first note about the first PTA newsletter deadline.

I'd put it off as long as possible because, enh, I like helping out at school but putting together the newsletter each month can be a little tedious.

At dinner one night I mentioned how I was putting off starting the first newsletter of the year, how it was one of those things making me look forward to school a little less. The other thing I'm not looking forward to: making 243 peanut butter & jelly sandwiches in 2008-09.

Maddie, who is onto me and my love of the school year, said, "See Mom? School starting isn't all fun and games!"

I always thought it looked like a book and a sandy beach.

I took the kids out to lunch on Friday because I'd been working all day and felt a little of the guilt. Not enough guilt that I took them to McDonald's and fed them absolute crap. Just enough guilt that we needed to do something out of the house, also the house was all because we were leaving town and I still had a bunch of crap to get done and lunch seemed like the easiest way to spend some quality time.

Quality time turned into tearing up tiny bits of napkins, rolling them into balls and blowing them at each other.

I'm not so much of a Fun Killer that I stopped this "game" at the beginning but after about five minutes I got a little bored and thought maybe we could engage in "conversation" at the table.

Maddie: "Mom, this is fun."

Me: "Really? You're blowing pieces of napkins at each other. It seems kind of boring to me."

Maddie: "Didn't your mother ever let you have fun when you were a kid."

Me: "No, never. Ever." (This is actually totally true. No, seriously.)

Maddie: "Well then, Mom? This is what fun looks like."

I swear we encourage farting in this house.

Back in November I took Gary, The Cat to the vet because he was growling at us and walking weird. Gary is just about the nicest cat you'll ever meet. He's also one of the biggest cats you'll ever meet. It's entirely possible he could break a bone while walking down the stairs. In spite of myself I was concerned. If you'll recall, we paid $115 to find out Gary....was....constipated.

This morning Max came into my room, laid down in the bed and told me his stomach was hurting. This happens to my kids from time to time so we tried a few yoga moves I've learned. We tried having Max lay with a pillow under his stomach. Nothing seemed to help and at hour two he started crying and begging to go to the doctor. An hour before he had been crying and begging not to go to the doctor. (Hello? Shots?)

So I called and told the doctor we needed to get in immediately because my baby has appendicitis or cancer or malaria.

Of course as we drove to the doctor....his abdominal pain went away.

We use a family doctor for "emergency" visits and the pediatrician for our regular check ups because the family doctor has a lot more openings each day, but the pediatrician knows us a lot better. The family doctor is thorough, they have an x-ray machine (pediatrician doesn't) in the office and they're not afraid to use it.

The doctor asked him to pee in a cup for the first time in his life. Max looked at the doctor like she'd lost her fucking mind. "Lady? Do you want to drink my pee?"

After that they took a couple vials of blood and I had a reasonable amount of success at keeping his general "I'm afraid" crying from becoming the "Donkey Bray" (Thank you, Lindsay) screaming it can turn into lately. He cried but it never turned into the mouth thing where I have no choice but to gut myself with the broken end of a liquor bottle.

Finally we had x-rays done.

The diagnosis?

Gas and constipation!

JUST LIKE GARY!

Except it only cost me my pride as a mother being able to tell What The Fuck is going on with my kid and trusting my instincts. Oh, and $25. (Also unlike Gary, Max didn't urinate in the cat carrier on the way home from the vet.)(Also Max wasn't in a cat carrier on the way home from the doctor.)

We're still going to see his pediatrician on Monday to talk about how things have been going, but for now the constipation thing could go a long way in explaining his mood.  I mean the truth is, I've become pretty happy not having to keep track of the poops my kids put in the toilet. There was a time in my life when my days revolved around how much poop came out of each kid. It was a five or six year period and I was pretty happy not to think about anyone's poop but my own.

So I don't know when the last time my kid pooped was. Similarly, my kid doesn't exactly mark down his poops on a calendar and he has no clue when the last time he pooped was. I guess he has more important things to worry about....like curing AIDS or something.

===================

Hey I did another project with the kids this week. You can read about it at The Buzz Off. As an update, Maddie had a couple friends over this afternoon and took apart her toothpick sculpture and reworked it with them. Nice, an additional hour of daylight burned. Thank you Jesus.

At Mighty Haus we made a Deck Your Deck feature. It's kind of depressing me that almost everything on our list is on sale right now because summer is halfway over. Don't get me wrong, school starting is a pretty big prize but the stupid fall and winter in Michigan is kind of depressing.

At Mighty Junior I've been Christmas shopping....I mean Back To School shopping.....same thing. Here's our Back To School Guide and our Lunchbox Round Up. This week the Back To School Clothes Guide is running.

I'd rather write you something succinct and intelligible but this will have to do.

The kids are still trying to kill me. Unfortunately Max's attempts at killing me have become a lot less pleasant than the usual, "Kids? Aren't they little shit heads half the time!?" Something isn't quite right with my usually easy going dude. I don't know if any of you remember when Max was two and three when I started this website. But Max was a little terror. A demon.

He threw up on me in the middle of tantrums, he threw fits in the grocery store making me leave a full cart in the aisle and run for cover, he was constipated and I think some core part of him believed he was constipated because of me and I had to pay.

But in the last three or four years those tantrums have mostly disappeared. But in the last few months they've come back into our lives and I feel a lot of the time like I'm being held hostage by Max's intense mood and inability to stop making this horrible sound with his mouth that goes a little like this:

"AAAAHHHHH AAAAAHHHHH AAAAAAHHHHHHH"

Some of my proudest parenting moments occur when he's making this horrible sound with his mouth.

Like the day last week when his cheap crappy plastic toy from the dentist was broken, for two minutes, until I parked the car, picked up the piece and snapped it back together. The toy was fixed, but his mouth wouldn't stop making that noise. With tears and crying. Crying, hey I can handle a good cry. Sometimes I poke myself in the eye to have a good cry. I like to cry. I understand the outlet.

But this noise he makes with his mouth. It's enough to make me rip my uterus out of my body and stuff it in his mouth.

Okay, that was disturbing and reading that sentence made me gasp with the violence of it all. But MY GOD the stupid noise that comes out of his mouth during these fits. It's just that bad.

So I thought I'd shame him into stopping that noise coming from his mouth by continuing into the store so we could buy a birthday present for a party Maddie was attending that afternoon. I thought, perhaps as a seven-year-old he'd get to the door of Target and realize, "Holy Shit I'm acting like a two year old."

But he didn't. He was still very upset about his toy breaking (and being put together two minutes later) (also, he later claimed he was upset about the cavities the dentist found in his mouth) and couldn't stop crying. He also couldn't stop making that horrific noise come out of his mouth.

He out lasted me in our little game of chicken and even though he didn't care if he walked around the store sounding like a two year old the shame of having a seven year old acting like a bleating goat (thank you, Heather) was too much for me to publicly bear.

We went back to the car empty handed and Oh Boy, this is where I win The Summer Parenting Pageant of 2008. I was pretty angry that we couldn't go into a store because of my son's tantrum. We're past that, remember how I'm better at parenting now that they're older? And how I don't lose my patience very often anymore?

It turns out I don't lose it as often because the kids don't lose it as often. Because I haven't really changed at all. That's reassuring isn't it?

So we're driving home and for the first half a mile I'm willing myself to not hear the "AAAAAAHHHHH AAAAAHHHHHHH AAAAAAAHHHHHHHH" coming out of Max's mouth. For the second half a mile I try reasoning with him, "Look Max, I know you're upset and I that's okay but please, please, I'm begging you. Please just cry with your mouth closed. Just shut your mouth and cry like that. Okay?"

For the next half a mile I willed myself with all my strength not to drive us into a tree. You'd think my sense of survival would kick in and I'd realize I wouldn't be hearing the noise anymore but then we'd all be dead and that's not ideal. But you have no idea how horrible the noise was. How badly I wanted to get away from it. How hard it was not to throw the car off the road into a slightly wooded park with lots of trees.

Since my survival techniques weren't working I pulled into a parking lot, left the a/c on (though, that would have been another way to stop the noise) and stood outside the car giving myself a time out.

It was like 2003 all over again.

Had it been a one time thing I would have told you this story as a funny little "Oh Dear! Max was tired!" type of thing.

But this is something we've been dealing with for the last few months starting when he hated Day Camp so much he kept the entire neighborhood awake for a couple of hours screaming about it. He had to leave the swim club because of a freak-out, we have to see a specialist to have his fillings done because he lost it at the dentist office, the whole family has laid awake waiting for the wave of fury to pass over the kid so we could all go to sleep.

It's gotten to the point that Logan and I are spending twenty to thirty minutes each night discussing what the hell could possibly be wrong with him.

I spend time thinking maybe I've really done a terrible job raising my kids. Maybe I created a monster and he can't deal with even the smallest disappointments with any grace at all.

But he could....I remember a time when we weren't prisoners of Max and the noise he makes with his mouth and his inability to get a hold of himself. He was normal and one might even say easy going.

My gut tells me something is wrong. He hasn't wanted to play with his buddies from school, he hasn't been his goofy self as often. We went camping this weekend and he usually would have been running around with a pack of kids from school, enjoying the freedom. Instead he seemed a little lost and a little sad.

But I don't see anything physically wrong with him, I only have a "gut feeling". We're supposed to trust those feelings, I know.

Years ago Maddie lost her mind for a few weeks. She acted like a psychotic little girl throwing her favorite stuffed animal in the toilet and then crying saying she didn't know why she did it. She unloaded salt and pepper on tables at restaurants and threw her body around in flailing tantrums in public.

I described her behavior to friends and they said, "Sounds like she's having late Terrible Twos." Or "Oh, that sounds like how my kid acts all the time! Ha!" Or the best, her preschool teacher suggested I tell Maddie to talk to God and ask Him to help her stop throwing her Teddy Bear in the toilet.

Which was a nice idea and all and I am Pro-God for sure. My gut was telling me something was wrong but I couldn't see anything physically wrong with her.

It turned out she had a hidden sinus infection through everyone of her sinuses. We only found it because she'd had an MRI to help us understand her overall low muscle tone.

I've put off seeing the pediatrician because I can't face the possibility that there's nothing physically wrong with him that's causing this.   And I doubt the doctor will do an MRI just to find out if there's something making him act like a psychopath like his sister did years ago.

Although I bet she would if Max started making that terrible sound with his mouth while he's in the office.