Suburban Bliss:: Birth Control Via The Written Word

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.

Feeling incredibly smug.

Since school Maddie's been waking up at 7:00am sharp each morning.

She was waking up at this hour even though it's summer and all we have in this house is time. Time to fill. If you wake up at 7:00am sharp, that means there are about 14 hours of daylight to burn each day. If you sleep until 8:00am or even, Heaven forbid, 9:00am you've reduced the number of hours you spend potentially bored out of your mind with your smart ass mother suggesting you clean your room if you're so bored.

We both win in this scenario.

One morning, I happened to be awake early and heard an alarm clock going off at 7:00am sharp and watched as Maddie stumbled out of her room and down the stairs, seemingly still asleep.

She was setting her alarm clock to maximize the number of hours she can spend making me TOTALLY INSANE.

I tried to explain that only robots, like her dad, use alarm clocks. Normal people try to sleep as much as they possibly can. Why don't we turn your alarm clock off until school starts back up?

"I just like to get a start on the computer before Max gets up."

Uh, yeah?
No.

A week ago I went into check on her before I went to bed. I grabbed her alarm and secretly turned it off.

The next morning she slept until 8:45am.

"It's weird, my alarm didn't go off."

"Huh. That's weird."

And every morning since then her alarm keeps malfunctioning. And she's sleeping until 8:00 or even, 9:00.

Weird.

Babysitter Etiquette.

First of all, Hey! We made it through the first half a month of summer vacation and I didn't scream or threaten to dip anyone in chocolate or send them to all-year boarding school. Only two more months to go!

Second, I have a question. I'm full of questions lately. Max has a friend around the block and his parents work out of the house so they have a sitter three days a week. They invited Max over to play yesterday and I sent him over for a couple of hours. I know they play together really well, so it doesn't make extra work for the sitter. It might even make her job easier. I know that having that particular friend over to our house makes my life easier.

As an aside, I tried to express to this kid's mother what a great kid her son is. How I think he's so sweet and really funny and personable for a seven year old. I went on to mention his freckles and toothless grin and his great easy going attitude. Then, all the sudden, I felt a little creepy because I was actually gushing about her kid.

The usual rules of "Play Date" require reciprocation, yesterday Max played at his pal's house so it would normally follow that his friend would play over here the next time.

But how does that work? They're paying for a sitter, is it weird for the kid not to be home? Then, on the other hand, if the kid is home is it fair for all their play dates to have my kid added to her responsibilities?

As a final question. The most important one. When is it appropriate for me to steal the sitter?

Found Money

The other day Logan stopped at the market on his way home from work. On his way out he saw a pile of money outside the car next to him. It was $70, so he waited in his car to see if the person who owned the money came back to the car. After 15 minutes or so he decided this was a waste of time and left a business card on the car saying, "Did you lose something?"

I wonder if the woman who came back to her car actually lost her sense of wonder, or her faith in the world and read Logan's note as a sign from God.

Unfortunately, when she called she said she hadn't lost anything...anything from her purse or pocket anyway.

Logan and I are very sensitive about our karma. Living here for this last year feels like we've used up all our good luck. Also, a couple weeks ago there was a customer error made in our checking account and the resulting fees the bank charged us is paying for some lovely bank executive's kid to get braces. We're really sensitive about money and losing it.

Because losing an amount of money that could have paid for a family trip to visit friends in Texas, a trip we decided not to take to, you know, "save money" hurts a lot.

Honestly if Logan had found $5 or even $20, we'd have spent it on, who even knows where our money goes anymore (besides the bank executive's vacation fund). We wouldn't have thought that much about the karma because I've lost $20 before and it didn't shake my world or ruin many plans. That's karma I can live with.

But $70 wasn't something we could just pocket because if we lost $70 somewhere, we'd be pretty upset.

So Logan told each of the kids they could each give $35 to whatever charity they wanted. Maddie, of course donated her money to the Humane Society, with a note suggesting the money pay for things a DOG would like. Not a CAT. Max sent his money to the Humane Society as well because he didn't really know what else to do.

They both wrote notes about why they were donating this money, leaving out the part where their parents live in fear of their good luck running out.

Even the easy one isn't.

I mentioned the other day how Max was only in it for the mustache. I also mentioned how that little gem came after a monstrous tantrum, totally fitting for the two year old Max, but not so much fitting for the 7.5 year old Max.

All afternoon after a full day of camp, he mentioned several times he didn't like it, he wasn't going back, it's torture. I asked him why, he said, "It's boring." I can tell you what's "Boring", sitting around the house trying to find something to do because all your friends are on vacation and your mom is trying to work. 

Camp, on the other hand, is really not boring.

But he couldn't elaborate, even with some suggestions from me. "Is it tiring?" "Are you sad more of your friends aren't there?" "Is it too loud and hectic?"

His only elaboration was "It's torture."

This season I paid $90 to get Max into soccer at his insistence, and once there, he had several meltdowns and in general lost his shit. Logan is better at handling these types of situations where shit is lost but the practices were nights Logan wasn't available. So I let Max drop out.

This was a big mistake. We, as a family, frown on quitting things you've asked to sign up for. Since I'd let him drop out of soccer, there is no way he's dropping out of anything else he asks to sign up for. Because of this I decided to acknowledge that Max wasn't thrilled about camp, but since he had to go back anyway, I mainly ignored his grumblings about not wanting to go to camp again.

That night at bedtime, Max fell apart. Thinking we didn't want to cater to these freak-outs or pay attention to them. We ignored it. We told him if he didn't get a hold of himself he was going to his room. We told him he wasn't getting tucked into bed until he stopped screaming. 45 minutes later, he was still shrieking and I was praying for the SuperNanny to drop down and tell me what the hell to do now.

Finally he stopped screaming, but kept whimpering and sobbing. I tucked him into bed and helped him calm down. He continued to whimper for another half hour or so and I listened from my bed in the next room.

I realized as I sat there where maybe we'd gone wrong.

I'm used to Maddie who doesn't really "suck it up". She is anxious in situations that make her uncomfortable and she can tell me in great detail what exactly is bothering her and how she feels. (Please see her mouse vs snake lunchroom analogy at 6 years old.) It's heart wrenching to watch her go through these moments in her life, but it's easier to hold her hand because she's so good at knowing how she feels.

Max actually does "suck it up" most of the time. Most of the time he just does it anyway, even when he's feeling anxious or weird or whatever. But then, since it's hard for him to talk about how he's feeling, I think he can feel like we aren't taking his feelings seriously.

As I sat there listening to him sob himself to sleep, it dawned on me that the only way we don't expect him to just "suck it up" and be our usual easy going guy is if he totally freaks out. Then we're all clear Max is unhappy. Not just a little unhappy, he's really pissed.

I think a lot of Monday night's hysterics were compounded by exhaustion. Also, since Tuesday he's had a great time at camp and has been perfectly happy to head out the door in the morning. Still it's interesting how even my "easier" kid can throw me for a loop sometimes.

This is the part where Maddie gently suggests we get rid of him like she's been suggesting since the day we brought him home.

In other news: SPORKS!

There are worse things to be in it for.

Max is attending day camp this week. This is a camp that costs $40, lasts from 9am to 4pm and is not a Vacation Bible School run by Baby Eating Presbyterians. So far it sounds awesome right? I picked Max up yesterday and he was wearing a pretty awesome fake mustache that made him resemble a character (in my mind) called "The Side Kick" from the Sabotage video.

He seemed to have had a good time. Until a few hours later when he told me he didn't want to go back. That he didn't like it. It was boring. It was also torture. All this ended with an hour long screaming session reminiscent of his cranky (and constipated) second year on this planet.

This morning when Max was a little calmer I asked him why he seemed so happy when I picked him up from camp yesterday but now says he hates it?

"Mom, I was only in it for the mustache."

Becoming That Parent

We signed Max up for TBall this year and switched his team so he could play with kids from the new school. He didn't get onto our first choice team but we were assured this team would also have kids from the new school.

So we said, "Oh well..." and were disappointed he wasn't on the team we'd have liked but I thought to myself, "Think about how many whining angry parents this organization has to deal with. We'll make the best of this."

I don't think of myself as One Of Those Parents.

So after a few missed connections and weirdness we were hooked up with our team for practice. I saw one kid from Max's class I recognized but none of the other kids. As we stood there I realized the kid I recognized wasn't playing, it was her preschool sister playing on the team.

Slowly I put it together that all these kids were kindergartners or preschoolers. Max didn't know a single one of the kids.

Max doesn't really like sports, we've tried a few and he ends up hating it. And sobbing. And gets mad whenever someone takes the ball from him. Like it's a personal affront. Like they took the ball just to be assholes.

TBall was the only sport he played that held his interest, probably because of the slower pace. Please see here.

After the first practice he wanted to quit TBall too.

That's when I became That Parent.

The one who makes angry phone calls and sends angry letters in an attempt to get things to be the way they selfishly want even though the organization has worked very hard to make the teams work and rearranging everything for one kid's precious sensibilities is a huge ass grinding pain.

I understood all that and still I set about being a huge pain in the ass, begging to have Max's team changed.

I got back the usual things one would get in this situation, gentle pats on the back about "Making New Friends" and "Expanding One's Social Circle" (with preschoolers.....okay....? No.) I went back and forth a few times, finally sending off a note explaining how stupid it was to suggest my 7.5 year old son make pals with 4 year olds. I also said, we'd make him play for the season as a life lesson in making the best of things, but it made me sad that the only sport my kid enjoyed would be ruined by the experience.

Immediately as I fired off the last note the team coordinator let us know Max had been moved to the team we wanted.

Although I felt like a baby, a gigantic baby crying for her binky, sometimes as a parent you have to be the whiny baby. You have to be That Parent.

I guess the key is trying to be That Parent only so many times so no one actually hands you a binky when you complain about something.

The oldest kid actually broke Logan's hand when he shook it.

Yesterday a neighbor held an open house to celebrate her middle son's high school graduation.

We, you might be surprised to learn, love parties. So we attended the open house.

The family who used to live in our house came to the party and I invited them over to take a look in their old house. Luckily we'd put all the cocaine away, and almost all the sex toys. The house is really different since the time they lived here, mostly because of some severe water damage that caused the second floor to become one with the first floor.

Some day I want to be able to walk through our old house with the kids. Max probably won't be able to remember it but Maddie will.

I have a really strong feeling that homes are more than places we live. That they encapsulate so much of who we are, they're a part of us. That's why, even though our last house tried to kill me in the months leading up to it's sale, I still sobbed like a little baby during our last walk through.

The landlord here, who's owned the house since the last family lived here, could really care less about this house. He doesn't care if a family lives here or if the neighborhood has block parties and watches out for your cat when you lose it outside. This house is an albatross around his neck he'd like to unload on us for as much money as the market can bear.

So it was fun walking through the house with the last family who loved this house. Hearing their older kids remember eating breakfast in the old kitchen and showing us which room they shared with the baby (who's 13 now).

After we walked them through the house I took them out to the garage where their family had made a growth chart on the side entry door. If you thought my first day/last day picture was mind blowing, seeing these little three-foot marks on the door next to fully grown young adults who are now taller than me pretty much blew almost all my brain cells.

It's also the first day of summer and I'm finding it hard to believe that some day my kids will be young adults and won't spend half the first day of summer vacation explaining how there's nothing to do.

People claim I will miss these days, I can't wait to find out.

First Day, Last Day

I never post and then all I do is blabber on and on.

A week or so ago Maddie saw the dreaded Maturation Video at school. You know the one where they tell you about your period and body odor and the fact that you'll grow breasts...at some point. I already handled these things with great ease, or not. Still, I did buy her a book and it answered a lot of her questions and kind of narrowed down the things she wanted to know about.

I bought myself a few more years before I have to explain BDSM. Phew.

During the Maturation Video they talked a little about how some girls experience "Mood Swings" as their bodies go through changes.

One day Maddie had a little emotional come apart because the two way radio she walks to school with didn't connect to me right away. She came running into the house, hyperventilating and fighting back tears. I explained to her that, since she'd just walked out the door and I hadn't yet reached the radio which was in the kitchen, about six feet away, I hadn't turned it on.

But see now? I'm turning it on. You're okay, take a deep breath.

Later that afternoon she said, "Remember this morning? When I freaked out about the radio not working? Was that a "Mood Swing"?"

Oh, oh, oh....Dear Sweet Little Madison, you were born on a mood swing and if it's PMS? That either means your body's been waiting for your period for about NINE AND A HALF YEARS or that you're my daughter and a little high strung. Sorry.

******

In other news I just closed out a guide to wonderful summer party dress up clothes for kids at Mighty Junior. Shockingly, we pulled together a lot of great things for girls and boys.

I also came up with a list of 50 Things To Do With Kids Around Detroit Before They Grow Up at the Buzz Off. Surprisingly, not one of them involves a racial stereotype, a joke about crime or a reference to the stupid mayor.

I think it's a good list, but obviously not complete. If you're in the area, give me your best ideas over there in the comments.

Mom and Me Camping

Friday morning I decide enough is enough and three nights of not sleeping isn't worth pretending I'm a healthy person. I accept I'm a sickly weak person who has been on antibiotics three times in two months and called the doctor about the cough that is trying to kill me (and my marriage).

At the doctor I have chest x-rays taken and hey! Hello Bronchitis! You're a new affliction I haven't yet had in the last three months. I mention to the doctor how I was supposed to go camping, in the rain, and how I probably shouldn't go, right? I mean, if you could just give me a note to give my son that would be swell.

He doesn't see any reason to cancel the trip, even when I reminded him about the tent, the rain, the lightening, and the lack of bathrooms he still thought I'd be just fine on a camping trip.

Jerk.

****

We're setting up our tents, one of the veteran Cub Scout moms comes over to help a few of us out. As we're helping set up someone's tent I ask, "So are there sinks here?"

She looks at me as though I've just asked if where the hot tubs and massage therapists were.

****

It's 8 o'clock, rain is pouring over me as I realize everyone else has some sort of cover over their tent and mine...doesn't. I borrow some stakes and a tarp and attempt to create some kind of rain shelter. While it pours and I try to hammer stakes into the ground. My underwear is wet. I am not comfortable.

I've never been camping in a tent as an adult. There was the one time Logan and I set up this tent in the orchard at the bed and breakfast we stayed at when we got engaged. But that didn't count because we were in the backyard of a house and also because it didn't rain.

****

The rain stops, we go to watch the bonfire and some awkward teenage boy scouts perform some skits. Lightening flashes over the lake and scares Max so we head back to our tent to eat graham crackers, chocolate and not-roasted marshmallows.

A bolt of lightening touches down 20 feet away. I begin to wonder if, you know, sleeping in a big open field with metal supports over my head is such a fabulous idea. I'm wondering why I'm the only one who seems to think this is a terrible idea. It's probably my crazy medicine talking. Or something.

****

The sky opens up and rain pours down. The bottom of the tent is wet but we're up out of that because of our air mattress. The air mattress I had to fill inside the tent because it is just a tiny bit bigger than the square footage of our little tent.

Max and I get out of our clothes, he's suddenly shy about getting naked in front of me so we turn out all the lights and get our pajamas on in the dark.

It's actually really cozy in the tent when the rain isn't coming down too fiercely. It hits the tarp and makes a satisfying crackle. We use Max's head lamp to make shadow puppets on the walls of the tent.

I hope this is a night Max always remembers.

****

It's midnight, Max is asleep exactly two minutes after telling me he wasn't at all tired and could stay up all night.

I'm listening as my totally makeshift, I-Have-Absolutely-No-Idea-What-I'm-Doing, rain guard is blowing in the wind. Each gust threatens to tear the entire tarp off the tent. I know my knots are ridiculously non-functional.

I'm waiting for the minute I have to make a run across the camp, carrying Max in the storm to the car.

My friend Leslie is in the tent next to us with her little boy (the one I left home alone). The winds pick up and she texts me, "You okay?"

I reply, "Who the hell thought it was a good idea to put the girl with anxiety issues in a tent in the middle of a hurricane?"

Her: "That should be a movie."

Me: "....or great content for my website. If we make it out alive."

****

We make it out alive.

Then, I tried to put all my friend's kids in danger!

The last time we talked I told you about how my son nearly killed himself and his pal while trying to save the cat from imminent danger in the neighbor's backyard. At the end of that post I mentioned how I wasn't happy allowing my son to nearly kill my friend's six year old, later that week I wanted to do something even more wonderful.

I drive home from school every day, my friend drives to school, which is good because it's really the only reason I own a minivan: carpool. A day earlier my friend had asked me to pick up her kids because she was taking her youngest to get his three year old pictures taken. I have two kids and have never had my kids pictures taken.

Consider this "foreshadowing".

I pick up her five-year-old and six-year-old after school and they say, out loud, to me: "Hooray! We get to come to your house today!" And I reply, "No, not today!"

Consider this "foreshadowing".

I drive them home and drive the 1/4 mile back to my house. Max and I are sitting on the floor playing with a new toy and the kids are grabbing snacks when I hear my friend at the back door.

I'm thinking to myself, "Wow, that was fast. What did I forget?"

I say, "Hey, what are you doing here?"

She says, "Ha! You've got my kids right?"

Then I passed out, hit my head on the granite countertop and died.

Only, unfortunately, not really.

My friend ran from the house to get home to the kids. I said, 'I'll call them and let them know you're coming!"

I dial the number and a man answers and now, a pedophile has realized the kids are home alone and is "babysitting" for them. I ask who it is, it's good to know the name of your friend's babysitter. He answers, "This of Sargent Thomas. Is this the mother?"

I started hyperventilating, I don't handle things like this very well. Especially when I'm so stupid.

"Ha ha! No! This is the mother's worst friend ever! I was supposed to take the kids home with me instead of dropping them off after carpool. And.....clearly I didn't do that. Ha! Ha! My kid also played with an ax the other day. Heh......."

I had no time to let my friend know that the police were waiting for her at her house so she pulled into her driveway with three police cars in it.

Luckily her kids were not hurt or anything terrible. They had realized she wasn't home after a few minutes and thought to call 911 since they didn't know my number.

Unluckily, my friend had left her house early in the day in a hurry to get to her appointment, so a used Pull Up happened to be laying on the floor. Also, they'd just celebrated their youngest's birthday so candy and other treats were lining every surface in the kitchen. Also the kids were playing with their Wusthoff Juggling Set.

Every one was fine and I'm mostly done beating myself up about it but that was just about the exact moment I started to realize what people mean when they suffer from depression and they can't concentrate or focus and that maybe going off my medicine while I'd been sick was actually affecting my ability to deal.

Ways I've Felt Like The Shittiest Parent In All The Land This Month

I know people always say they're "Winning Worst Parent" and pretty much all of this website makes me the worst parent in all the land according to a surprising number of people. Still. This month I've had a few moments where I was just standing there, experiencing things like near loss of consciousness, self flagellation and hysterical weeping.

I'm writing about one of them because, I promised a thing about what I've learned about dealing with difficult relationships. I've been wrecked with the realization that I'm really just a woman who flails through life so probably my advice is as good as the advice of the disabled lady at Target the other day who called the cashier a bitch who she hoped would one day not be able to walk again. (I'm sure she meant that in the nicest way possible.) I'm having a bit of trouble with that post so let's just do this for now.

A few weeks ago Max had a friend over after school. As they played in the back yard with various Matchbox cars, I marveled yet again at the fact that I live in a place where I have a back yard where children can play. One of the kids came in to tell me Gary, the smallish puma who lives here, was in the yard behind our house. How could he get out because there's a fence between them.

I pointed out that he'd get back the same way he went in, not to worry. Off they went to play.

But boy, Max was really worried about Gary being stuck in the neighbor's yard. Really worried.

He was so worried he went into the garage looking for something he could break down the fence with. He tried a shovel to dig a hole under the fence. He tried a broom to try and knock the fence down. Then he had a really great idea. We own an ax we use to chop firewood. The ax is hung on a holder high up in the garage, so high, we thought, the kids couldn't reach it.

Honestly, I thought my kid wouldn't even think to touch it. I have kids who have an innate sense of civic responsibility. A few months ago we went to Detroit and took a ride on the People Mover (Detroit's light rail that takes you....in....a...circle around the city). We'd bought the kids ice cream cones before getting on the train and were going to let them break the "No Food" rule because, well, it's the People Mover and there's rarely anyone even on the thing.

But no, Madison read the rule and went against our wishes and threw her half eaten ice cream cone in the trash. She also cajoled Max into throwing his ice cream cone away too even though we insisted it was fine, Detroit doesn't really expect you to follow the rules.

I could spend days complaining about the bickering and the eye rolling....but not following the rules is not something I can complain about.

I guess though I didn't specifically lay down a rule about not reaching for the very bottom of the ax handle and getting the God damn thing down.

I'm in the house and hear some banging but I assumed it was a neighbor working on their yard (something the people in this neighborhood are very adept at doing). Then a few moments later Max started calling for me with a certain amount of alarm in his voice.

I walked to the back yard and see the backyard neighbors standing there and Max holding a tall wooden handle.

Neighbor I've never met says, "Uhm....why is he hitting the fence with that?"

I look, thinking, "Yes, why is he and what is it?"

Then I realize it is an AX. Like Lizzie Borden AX A Cut-Your-Head-Off, Maim-Your-Friend, Lose-A-Limb AX.

I swear to you I thought I would pass out as I realized it was an ax and all the horrible things that could have happened in the last 15 minutes passed through my brain. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't see, I could barely gather enough breathe to explain to my kid why I was going to have to kill him.

And Max, poor Max, says as I begin to Freak The Fuck Out, "But Mom! Mom! It was for a good cause! Gary was trapped over there! I had to get him out."

I send Max into the house thank the new neighbors for not calling Child Protective Services and, oh yes, introduce myself. Mortifying.

Also, later that week I dropped my friend's 5 and 6 year-olds off at home when I was supposed to bring them home with me. They were alone in the house and my friend came home to three policemen in her driveway. That made me feel pretty awesome.

Hopefully the Difficult Relationship Post will be coming along soon.

If only you could pick your family.

We went to a funeral for a friend's grandfather this morning.

Logan gets antsy about funerals. Barring a tragic death of any sort, I generally like funerals. I love hearing stories about older people who have passed away. I love seeing the pictures of them growing up. I love seeing how their lives have touched so many people. To me, though it's sad to say good bye to those we love, a funeral is an oddly satisfying way to celebrate a life.

My friend's mother stood up to speak about her father and said something that really touched Logan and I.

"I feel fortunate to have had him as my dad."

And with that my tears started (the other reason I like funerals: excuse to cry.)

I know a lot of people who would say the same thing about their own fathers. Unfortunately, I know a lot of people who can't.

In fact, I've lived through all of them.

We visited Max's school last week and browsed through his first grade writing journal.

The question was: "Have you ever had a tantrum?"

His answer: "Yes, I have had tantrums. In fact, I have had many."

The lesson I'm going to keep learning for the rest of my life.

We've been trying to teach our kids to ride their two wheel bikes for just under a year. It's been a mildly frustrating process because convincing our kids to even get on the bikes to, you know, try to ride. Because generally the process of learning to ride a bike is trial and error.

The error part is what gave Maddie pause. Maddie doesn't like doing things which involve "error", because "error" when riding a bike means falling and I think Maddie's goal in life is to avoid anything which can cause you to fall.

Max was a little bored with the process of learning to ride his bike. He'd try for about two minutes and give up.

Though I know kids do things in their own time and there's no reason to stress about it or push them too much. Still, I also know a few adults who's parents never pushed them to ride a bike and so, they never learned to ride a bike. So I ended up balancing my frustration with my kid's disinterest with riding a bike and my desire for them to actually get on their bikes and just ride.

Thankfully spring fever hit Max hard and he spent a few hours perfecting his technique until he was actually riding his bike!

The pressure of her little brother riding his bike before her forced Maddie to overcome her fear of, gasp, falling off a bike, and now she's also riding. Albeit, reluctantly....when forced...with a scowl on her face.

Now that we can all ride bikes, I have an elaborate fantasy of taking the kids to Amsterdam. But we'll settle for riding up for ice cream.

Over two hundred viruses cause the common cold. Stop fighting it.

The kids and I created a couple terrariums last week during spring break, I shared them at The Buzz Off this week and you might enjoy that. (It's less of a 'How-To' and more of a 'Go over here and here to find out how to and we just sort of flew by the seat of our pants and did this' Too long for the title field and definitely not SEO'd.)

Spring break is the break where I start to realize if I don't up my income substantially we're going to be staring at each other every single day for three months this summer. And I'm going to be saying, "I don't know why you have to be so mean to him all the time." And, "Just use your words. We don't hit in this family." Until the cats punch me in the face and tell me to call The Supernanny already.

Maybe it will be different this year since we live in Heaven now. But a few weeks of summer camp never hurt anyone. Or so I assume since I never went away to camp. If I was away from home for more than 12 hours I would become increasingly anxious about what was happening there. This is amusing to me now because mainly what was happening at home was my parents ignoring each other or conversely throwing Little Debbie Snack Cakes at each other's heads. So you can clearly see why I wouldn't want to be AWAY from all that. WHAT THE EVER LOVING HELL NINE-YEAR-OLD ME??? (Also? 20 bucks says Maddie never goes to camp either because of her own anxiety. Though not about Logan and I throwing snack cakes at each other. We throw hugs and kisses at each other!)

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

I've had two things on my mind this week and it's a topic which hasn't come up since the days of MOMS Club. You know when I strangled myself with a jump rope and stabbed myself with a horse tranquilizer during a discussion of breast feeding at a playgroup?

I've found as my kids get older there are less hot buttons to trample on than there are when you're a mother of young kids surrounded by other mothers of young kids. Most of this is due to my highly developed sense of weeding people out.

We had drinks with another couple the other night and she is a librarian. We were talking about books and how there's no reason to finish a bad one, not when there are literally a million more to read. You'll never be able to read them all so cut your losses and move on.

I feel like that about people, if someone irritates you...which really has more to do with you than it has to do with them...move on. Because there are thousands of people out there who will be a better fit, you don't need to waste time on people who annoy you simply by being who they are.

Still there are two things that continue to drive me crazy in some parents I see around school and activities.

The first thing is people who try to pinpoint who gave their kid the flu/cold/strep whatever. This comes in the form of statements like, "Oh....so that's who gave it to us...." Or, "Didn't she realize he was sick? Why did she send him to school? Now my kid's got it!"

This is very similar to another issue I had as the mother of younger children desperately trying to fit in with my local MOMS Club. I wrote about it here.

There are a few things that bother me about this, the first one being the idea that it's so unusual for kids TO GET SICK. They get sick, you're stuck at home with them for a few days and maybe you eat mustard sandwiches because you can't get to the market. But really, this is called "life" and everyone gets sick. If you don't want illness to be a part of your life do yourself a huge favor and do not have kids.

The other thing that bothers me about this is the implication that some kid (or more specifically the kid's mother) purposely gave your kid a virus. That these irresponsible parents were so selfish they sent a sick child to school and now your kid is sick.

The truth is most illnesses are contagious before there are any detectable symptoms in your kid and if I were to keep my kids home from school every time they may have possibly come into contact with a virus or strep or whatever else is going around, my kids would never be in school. In fact they would have been home from November until now and probably wouldn't be able to make it back to school before summer break.

Instead of trying to pinpoint where your kid's illness came from let's use that energy to teach our kids to wash their hands.

The second thing is .... going to have to wait because I just really riled myself up. I think I pulled a muscle.

Well if you like it.....

Max couldn't hear for at least a year, and it turns out he can't see either. I got a note home a few weeks ago saying he'd failed the school's vision screening. I thought it was a fluke, he can see how many fingers I'm holding up. He can beat me at Guitar Hero. Apparently, though, as I watched him read this line of letters "A M L Z P" as "E N I S D", he's just learned to compensate really well.

He picked a pair of glasses I can not stand. I hate them. I hate everything about them. They are blue, they're wire, he liked them because the label named some stupid Nickelodeon television show and even though I pointed out the label would be removed for actual wearing he didn't care.

I suspect he will decide he hates these glasses in about three weeks and will blame me for not stopping him from getting them. I think he will then attempt to needle me into buying him another pair of $150 glasses. I fear I will be needled because I really hate these glasses but didn't want to have a fight about something he should really have control over.

It reminds me of the time I wore a blue and white gingham checked dress to school with a pair of red shoes a friend had given me as a hand me down. I was very excited about the outfit, my mother signed off with a bit of reluctance saying, "Well, if you like it that's all that matters!" I did like it, until I got on the bus and realized I was dressed up as Dorothy from the Wizard Of Oz. I carried my backpack with me all day that day trying to hide my shoes from view.

I was always angry my mother didn't just tell me "You're dressed like Dorothy, which is weird but if you like it go for it."

But now that I could be the one saying, "Maddie maybe you should put your hair in a barrette or hair band, or I don't know brush it a little more." Or "Max, those glasses are sort of lame and I think you won't like them in a week."

I find myself unable to, even though I swear to God one day Maddie is going to say to me, "Why didn't you make me do something with my hair!? I looked like an orphan!" And one day, in a couple of weeks Max is going to say to me, "I hate these glasses and I don't want to wear them. Why didn't you tell me to get different ones?"

And I will feel more like a mother than I ever thought possible.

He can hear me now.

Everything went exactly as it was supposed to.

His adenoids were "surprisingly large" and the incredible amount of fluid in his ears was hiding a double ear infection. Which could explain the random fevers and total emotional breakdowns over the most benign issues.

When I walked in after a school field trip he said, "It's like someone put microphones in my ears!"

I felt like crying.

Poor dude has been feeling like crap and didn't even know it wasn't normal....maybe he thought everyone was supposed to sound as if they were talking under water.

Can you hear me now?

We attended the Surgical Safari on Saturday. Everything put Max (and us) at ease. Logan and I chuckled during the presentation as very worried parents asked dozens of questions.

We're old pros, we thought. This is no big deal! We've done both these things before with our kids.

Now it's 10:30 the night before Max gets tubes and his adenoids out. I'm a little surprised my heart keeps beating a little faster than normal whenever I think of him heading off to the operating room.

I know everything will be fine, I'm not afraid for him.

I just wish I could make him less afraid.

I am the worst sick person you know.

*My sinuses staged a coup last night, they attempted to declare their independence from my face. During the night Nyquil appears to have worked out a peace treaty because so far today my eyes are not watering and my head is not exploding.

I'm about to go to the gym where I am going to take everything very slow. This embarrasses me, so I'm going to staple a sign to my shirt, "Delicate Peace Treaty Between Me And My Sinuses: Low Impact Workout Today. (I'm not just lazy.)"

***

*Max is having tubes put in his ears (again) and his adenoids out on Tuesday. I've been fielding a lot of questions and some I've handled better than others.

"So do they cut off the part of my ears that shows and put a tube there instead?"
"No it's just a teeny tiny tube. No one will see it, they put it right inside your ear. No cuts or anything."
(This would be effective I'm guessing, though not aesthetically pleasing.)

Him: "How do they take my adenoids out? With knives?"
(Uh oh....let's take the focus off knives and cutting!)
Me: "Oh no! No! Not with knives, they use....lasers which aren't like knives at all really."
Him (eyes huge): "You have got to be shitting me. They're putting mother fucking lasers in my mouth? You don't love me at all do you? The last 6 years have been a farce."

So I blew the pre-op pep talk. Hopefully the nice people who do the hospital tour Saturday can help us. This tour is called a Surgical Safari. When I told Max about it he asked if there were monkeys. I said, "Probably not, they might get in the way of surgery." Then he asked if he could at least swing onto the operating table on a vine like Tarzan.

I told him, "Yes".

They give him some sort of pre-anesthesia 'cocktail' that makes him loopy before going under. I'll tell him he just doesn't remember swinging into the OR.

***

*Maddie saw the orthodontist yesterday, an appointment I had long put off because I knew the outcome. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.

I was not wrong. She pretty much needs every single orthodontic device ever invented, plus a few I think he just made up. This news gave me a tiny feeling of pity for my parents, something I never, ever allow myself to feel.

As a seven year old, I had to tag along to the orthodontist for my brother. The orthodontist saw me and my teeth (which have been known to shoot out of my face....) and said, "Those are the shittiest teeth I've ever seen! What a mess! I think I could build a career out of those teeth!"

So he told my mother he would do my orthodontic work free of charge provided I could be a case study. So once a month I went in and had my picture taken to show the improvement. I wore about 40 different retainers over the next four years, each one bigger than the last. I think I wore everything on this page at one point.

In fifth grade I threw out my retainer, (the obnoxiously huge Frankel) with my lunch about four times. Twice I found it by digging through the trash cans after lunch. Pleasant! Another time my parents had to pay to replace it. Finally the last time my parents said they weren't buying me another one.

And so, now I have these annoying teeth and a hefty bill for the next two years. The orthodontist said this process should take two years and Maddie keeps saying, "The next two years are going to be pretty hard." I don't have the heart to tell her that my brother's work took all the way through high school graduation. And I wasn't even close to the final step of braces when I threw out my retainer one final time four years into the process.

I'll just leave that part of the story to myself I suppose.

In my case it holds a lot of useless data.

From Max's homework:

Did you know? Your heart, brain, and stomach are organs in your body.
Pretend you are one of these organs. Describe your job.

"I am your brain. I hold your nollege [sic]."

She's Omnivorous

We're at Eastern Market to buy our Christmas tree. We walk past a meat vendor who is offering pig's heads for purchase.

For a moment I think to myself, "How hilarious would that be to serve at the neighborhood holiday dinner?" (Very, very funny.)

Maddie sees it, her eyes fall out of her head and she says, "Whoa. That was gross. Ugh, I can't even think about it. I am not eating any more meat, especially not bacon. At least for a little while."

About an hour later, we stop for lunch. Maddie orders pancakes.

And a side of bacon.

Still not getting the joke.

The whole family is in the kitchen. The TV is left on in the family room.

Logan asks, "Hey Max, is someone watching TV in the family room?"

Max says, "I'll check."

We watch him go in, scan the room (keep in mind only four people live in this house), and turn off the tv.

He comes back.

Logan says, "So, was anyone watching TV?"

"Nope. So I turned it off."

Sometimes you have to live it to really understand.

Madison is a very good reader. She loves to read and often reads several books at a time. Which, according to Logan, is the sign of genius. To me it's a sign that she's inherited Logan's Cluttered Nightstand Syndrome. But anyway. Reading is her best thing.

Math is not her best thing. Math is more her gnashing of the teeth thing. She hates it and it's very difficult for her and so, she tries her hardest to not think about it more than is absolutely required. For the last couple of years though I've watched her fall behind in math, she had trouble memorizing her multiplication facts in second grade, which put her a little behind in third grade. Now in fourth grade it's all very difficult. Except geometry and place value, which is interesting because geometry was the only math class I ever got A's in.

Last year there were several evenings and mornings where I'd try to help her with her homework and we'd end up in screaming matches. I would sit down, intending to be a reasonable person and I'd end up gouging my eyeballs out with a pencil. Which doesn't make one very reasonable.

She would say the most aggravating things like, "THE TEACHER DOESN'T CARE IF WE GET THE RIGHT ANSWER!!!!!!"

?

And another favorite, "Oh, well I did that. That thing you're telling me. I did that. Yeah, right see, 7 + 4 is 12. Right it's 12. 12. It's 12. THE TEACHER DOESN'T CARE IF WE GET THE RIGHT ANSWER."

At which point we'd begin screaming at each other and a pencil would end up lodged in my eyeball.

Logan said he would help her with her homework, because he is less likely to lodge pencils in his eyeball. But Logan has about 6.3 minutes of 'Help With Homework' time in his day, unless he stops breathing, he'd get about 12.6 minutes then. So the bulk of homework help has fallen on me and it is a source of constant stress in this house.

I've been suggesting a tutor for a while but neither one of us has really taken the bull by the horns and done it.

Last night Logan had a rare night at home, don't worry after the kids went to bed he worked on Boy Scout things and the school newsletter a bit....we wouldn't want him to just sit around. Maddie showed him her work from the day and she got several problems wrong on their daily math worksheet. Things we thought she knew how to do, so Logan asked her to correct it.

Or maybe he asked Madison to saw off her fingers with a butter knife, I don't know. He couldn't possibly have asked her to simply correct a math problem based on the reaction Maddie had.

I tried to warn him. To tell him how he was about to ruin his only night at home this week. But he thought he would handle her better than I can.

Oh, it's a little sad to see that brave front wiped away. Only not really at all because sometimes it's nice to see The Robot crack.

Here's the conversation:

"Okay so that's why you're getting it wrong. You have to multiply across this way."

"No we don't. That's not what the teacher says. You're wrong."

"Maddie, here is the answer to this question. If you work it that way, you can't get it right."

"That's not the answer then."

"It is the answer. It's a calculator."

"Not in my class that's not the answer. You're wrong. My teacher wants us to do it this way."

"Your teacher wants you to have the wrong answer?"

"It's only wrong to you."

To his credit he remained calm for about 15 minutes of this, as he patiently tried to show her how you work the problem. At some point though her eye rolling and pouting lip which was dragging across the floor got to be too much.

He mimed strangling her behind her back and stuck his tongue out at her. I stick pencils in my eye and scream, he turns into a five-year-old. At that point he suggested she take a 5 minute break in her room and they'd come back to it.

When she left he said, staring at the paper, "Is it possible the teacher is teaching them a new way to do this type of problem?"

My daughter is making my husband doubt his ability to solve this problem: $458.70 x 45

She came back down, they tried to tackle the problem again. Her lip touched the ground, she hunched her shoulders so roundly she became a ball and suddenly 5x0 was most definitely 5. And THAT IS THE WAY HER TEACHER TELLS THEM TO DO IT!!!!!!

The teacher wants them to do it wrong.

At that point Logan stood up, walked out the side door and came back 10 minutes later announcing a tutor would be coming every Tuesday and Thursday starting next week.

(Reason #842 to love this house. A tutor lives right next door!)

In the end, we all win.

Max often leaves his bedroom light on when he's done upstairs. Our way of reminding him to go turn it off is to say, "Hey Max, is someone in your room?"

Every time he says, "I don't know, I'll go check."

Runs up the stairs, checks, turns off the light and reports back. "Nope, there's no one in my room so I turned off the light.

This morning we're all upstairs getting dressed. Max is standing in the bathroom showing me his new shoes.

I interrupt the gushing, "Hey, is someone in your room?"

He says, without checking, "No. So why did I leave the light on? There's never anyone in there except me."

And Al Gore came down from the heavens and bestowed many blessings of energy conservation on my son. I was happy he realized leaving lights on is wasting energy and I was also happy he'd be helping Al save some energy for the earth.

But mostly I was happy he finally got the joke.

He craves the human touch.

Tonight we're sitting by the trampoline and the wood fence trying to lure the neighbor's kitten, Maggie, into our yard with a dandelion. She's surprisingly easy to lure. Just shake a common weed through the fence and she can't help herself. She's coming over.

Maddie is in charge of the luring, because she knows how best to do it. Never mind we're just shaking a weed at Maggie to make her come under the fence into our yard.

Max and I are sitting in the grass watching Maddie do it best and his hand goes to my back.

Not to get my attention, just because he's talking to me. I swat at a mosquito on my arm and he pulls away. A minute later he puts his hand back where it was. "Remember the other night when Dad showed me that flip he can do?" [On the trampoline.]

I look at him, waiting for the joke or the goofy voice. No, he just wants to share that flip, earnestly.

"Yeah, I remember. That was fun," I tell him.

"I love those flips."

Sometimes at dinner, when he's sitting next to Logan he puts his hand on his back while he eats his dinner. He keeps shoveling food into his mouth, but his hand rests on Logan's back. It's as if he doesn't notice he's touching the person sitting next to him.

It's like he feels grounded by physically touching the person next to him.

It heals me.

Tag Team Insanity.

I'm so proud of Madison this week.

I'm so proud of me.

Each day of school has gotten easier for Maddie. She is, again, just like me in the way she convinces herself when something feels bad or not right, it will always and forever feel that way. Amen.

Logan and I patiently listened to her discontent and I told her it would get better. I told her it would get better, even though I wasn't sure it would. Even though I spent several days at home without her with a lump in my throat and heartburn worrying about how it was going.

I reminded her of times she was afraid and did it anyway, like on the big slide at the pool in Indy. I told her about times she made new friends quickly, like at the wedding when she met a new girl and then played Go Fish with her a lot of the night.

I told her people like to talk to people who smile, that a frown on your face, no matter what the reason, puts a lot of people off. I told her to be herself, to show them all how fun she is to be around.

When Maddie picked out a 'mean girl' on the first day of school and then the 'mean girl' walked up to say hello on the third day of school I gently suggested maybe she wasn't a mean girl after all.

I pulled all this parenting out of my ass and unbelievably, it worked. Things have gotten better for her.

The other day while Maddie and I waited for the bell to ring a little girl walked up and said, "Are you Maddie? Weren't we on a soccer team together in first grade?" Maddie didn't recognize her but I did so I said, "Oh yes! I remember you. Remember Maddie, she was our star player?"

And this little girl looked at Maddie and said, "I thought you were a really good player."

I know there are mean girls in school, and I know there will always be difficult people in her life. But I hope Maddie finds all those nice girls and surrounds herself with them.

Of course things are better with Madison and now Max is fighting back tears at the beginning of the day. He's a lot like Logan so he'll have to tackle this with him.

*New posts at Buzz Off and Ordering Disorder. Bento lunches, recipe binders, yard sale tips and small chairs all just waiting for you.

I think I love my landlord.

Right after we moved in to the new house, we realized the washer was leaking water all over the basement. At first this was upsetting because I don't really want to pay for it to be fixed, or worse buy a new washer. But then I remembered the thing about how we don't own this house so we called our landlord and he called back and said, "A new washer is coming today."

And I decided right then I never want to own a house again, except for the tax issues involved. But otherwise, never again.

Then last night, I suddenly realized I was drowning in a pool of sweat. My mother is afraid of using the air conditioning in her house (and her car). In fact she often tells me all about her thermostat settings with great pride. "I set it at around, you know 88 degrees, just to cut the humidity."

When I didn't have central air in my living space I honestly had to chew on my arm to keep myself from slapping my mother. I had to change the subject before suggesting she just get it over with and go live on the surface of the sun or better yet, maybe she should trust the air conditioning and the fact that God invented it so she could be comfortable in her own home and car.

So last night when I discovered myself sitting in a pool of sweat I wondered why because I actually enjoy being comfortable in my own home and often set the thermostat at 70 degrees, or if I'm feeling especially hedonistic 68 degrees.

After setting the thermostat at 32 degrees and noting the temperature in the house was still 88 degrees, I figured out something was wrong with the air conditioning.

Instead of sobbing about money and trying to fit in all our expenses into our income and OH GOD WHY DID WE BUY A HOUSE!!!??? I called our landlord and he's sending someone over to take a look. Of course, this all hinges on a contractor making time for this job in his busy schedule and it's 88 degrees with a lot of humidity and unlike my mother I don't consider this very comfortable.

Madison is doing a little better at school, her teacher is giving her plenty of opportunities to meet people and there were far less tears at the end of the day. I don't think the girls in her class are particularly unkind, Maddie complained no one liked her last year even when each morning I'd watch a group of three girls run up to greet her excitedly at the door.

We'll get through this and I'm just going to have to hope I'm helping her as much as I can (without becoming a helicopter parent) so she can hate me for other reasons as an adult.

As God as my witness she won't hate me because I can't properly utilize air conditioning! I promise you that.

New post about Growth Charts at The Buzz Off and I'm organizing things over at Ordering Disorder as well.

Anxiety: it's what's for lunch.

In shocking news the internet reaches all the way into the upper peninsula, they must have a very large extension cord. The drive was so long. So very, very, very long. Every time I started to feel sorry for myself I had to remind myself that my brother and his wife had to drive up from Indianapolis and that's even longer. I also had to remind myself of the idealistic people of the world who don't believe in portable dvd players in the car. Thank God we have no ideals and plenty of dvds because everyone arrived alive. If I were to do the trip over again, I'd probably break out the orange triaminic since my kids slept for about 35 minutes total in our 20 hours of travel.

The wedding was a lovely affair. My sister folded 1000 paper cranes which several family members helped to string up and put around the room. If you ever wondered what about 250 paper cranes looks like, here you go.

While we strung the cranes someone drank this. This drink I thought was a joke. It's like water....light!

Still the cranes turned out lovely at the reception.

Logan also made this for my brother (along with several others) after a florist mishap screwed up the order. The man can do anything, except fill the ice tray and put his clothes into the laundry chute.

In the end it was a beautiful wedding with a radiant and incredibly happy bride and that's all that matters.

Well it also matters that my sister in law, who has had the same bottle of vodka in her freezer since Logan and I's visit in August of 2006, drank four drinks plus a shot. Yes, they were bitch pops (plus a very girlish shot), but still.

Maddie was in the wedding and I worried a little that the stress of having people, you know, looking at her would be hard. The one time I was a flower girl, I walked down the aisle until the row my parents were in and then ran to them. I was so ashamed of myself I am looking down at the ground in all the pictures from that wedding. That particular uncle remarried and I was not in the wedding and I didn't ruin all their pictures either.

I braced myself for the worst as we rehearsed the event and kind of mentally prepared myself for the distinct possibility she wouldn't be able to do it. Maddie acknowledged she was nervous before we went down the aisle, or rather into the courtroom, but she marched out and was everything you'd expect a nearly 9 year old to be as a flower girl. Poised and happy. (Score another for expecting the worst and getting the best. Thank you Universe, again.)

Armed with this new side of my daughter, I thought she might just do great on her first day of school in a new school as a fourth grader. I expected the best so much, since she went to bed without tears and only expressed her concerns mildly throughout the day, I never once let a negative thought cross my mind. She'll be fine, I thought, she's grown up so much.

I didn't worry all day. Logan left her in the room talking to a couple girls and I thought she'd be fine. I didn't worry about it all day as I wrote this and then this. I was foolish enough to expect the best when I picked her up in the afternoon.

Max came out and told me what an "awesome" day he had. Who he played with, what he learned and all about his new teacher. Then Maddie came out and there were tears and many tales of the meanest girls you've ever heard of. They don't want to play with you even though they said they would, the lunch monitor thinks it would be better if you jumped off a cliff (she's certain that's what she was thinking), the new music teacher is the one you had a year ago and you hate her.

 

I thought if I expected positive, I got positive?

Tonight I'm saying lots of things like, "Every day will get better." And, "Remember how hard kindergarten was? That got better right?" And, "All you need is to find one friend. One friend will make it easier, you just have to keep trying."

And I'm saying all that and I'm trying to believe it. But I also know fourth grade is the prime time for cliques and I know how hard it is to get used to a new place and my heart is breaking for my daughter. I wish this wasn't so hard for her.

I wish it wasn't so hard for both of us. 

The thing about Madison.

I hate that I still feel the need to begin a post about my daughter with this style of disclaimer. That people still need to be told that you can be frustrated and overwhelmed by your child and still love them with every speck of your being. I love that Madison is complex, I love that she knows how she feels about things and I love that she has an empathy for animals that highlights her sensitive spirit.

I prayed and I prayed for a daughter and I didn't realize it at the time but I prayed for a little girl who is so incredibly like me I am supposed to teach her how to be a more comfortable and secure person considering all her quirks and insecurities. When I was growing up, no one was able to teach me those things because there were several areas which were lacking as part of a 'secure childhood'.

So much of what I thought it took to raise happy, healthy and secure children is in place: a loving family, a wonderful father, a secure home free of chaos, no worries about money, a brother who worships the ground she walks on, a mother who is well....good enough.

It seems like I've given her all these things I did not have growing up and she is still exactly like I was and it brings out an unpleasant feeling in me. Like I was given this chance to raise a daughter the way I wish I was raised and I've failed to do it differently. And when I look at the list of things I thought it took, I am the only one failing on that list. I still dislike talking on the phone, I'm still shy around new people, I struggle to like myself, I still fall into depression even though I have everything I ever wanted. (And I'm not talking about the house.)

Yesterday after my post Nicer-Funnier-Sister-In-Law emailed me and said over the week Maddie spent there she said to my brother several times, "I don't think she's having any fun/ I think she hates me / I think she wants to go home / I don't think she's happy here / I think I would be a shitty parent.  He too thought he would be a shitty parent, so if you feel like you're one (which you're not) we totally get it."

She also said, "...She doesn't seem to live in the moment like other kids....which makes me think that she's more mature than other kids her  age....but then the poor little thing is so shy....that it makes me think she's mature in her thinking but maybe not so socially.  Does that make sense?"

And it does, it really does. Maybe we should have given her that hormone free milk.

On Saturday we attended the neighborhood block party. She knew at least 3 of the girls at the event and this is an event which, thanks to mothers who are a lot more fun than I am, is geared toward fun for kids. There were silly string fights, scavenger hunts, a kids bake off, an egg toss, pinatas, jump rope contests and cherry pit spitting contests.

Every morning Maddie asks me what we're doing that's fun for kids today.

This is what she has in mind for a daily agenda.

But since there were girls she didn't know at this event Maddie spent almost 70% of the evening/afternoon crying that she wanted to go home. "I just don't want to be here." Alternately she shadowed Logan and I as we tried to have an adult conversation. I had to work very hard to push down the desire to say, "THIS IS THE FUN YOU DEMAND EVERY SINGLE DAY! THERE IS NO OTHER FUN! This is it."

A few weeks ago I took the kids to the pool. I got in and played with them for an hour and then said, I was going to sit and read a magazine and they could keep swimming if they wanted. Max toweled off and ran to the giant sandbox where he met 4 new buddies and they spent another hour building elaborate sand villages.

Madison sat next to me begging to go home. "THIS IS THE FUN!"

Two days ago my friend Andrea asked if she could take my two kids with her to the pool with her girls. I remembered the last visit where I gritted my teeth and wondered why my daughter can't just be a kid and enjoy things, but thought, "Andrea's girls will be there and she won't get bored."

An hour into the visit Andrea called telling me Maddie wanted to go home. Max was fine and had joined in a game with the other kids her daughter knows but Maddie just, "Wasn't having fun."

And it was sort of my breaking point for the summer. I have one every year but this year it is enormously frustrating because it's not just the endless stream of activities to fill the miles and miles of daylight. This year it's frustrating because it seems my son has caught on to the fact that it's possible to make your own fun and my daughter is a sullen 13 year old at 8 years old.

Every way she changes, she adds a new and more hellish challenge.

I don't think I'm the best mother for my daughter.

I remember once driving to Gymboree when Maddie was 9 months old. Back then Madison had a particular issue with the Germans. Not Germans in general, just the Germans who designed the 1998 VW Jetta GT. The TDI I'm sure would have been fine.

Since babies can't talk Madison let her disdain for German automobiles clear by shrieking at the top of her lungs for the entire 5 mile drive to Gymboree. Every week for the 6 months I tried to make a go of Gymboree, she screamed the entire way. I prayed during those drives I would get pulled over for drunk driving, not because I was driving drunk, just so I could say to the police man, "Please.....please save me from my daughter."

I mostly left my body during those drives, actually all the drives I took with Madison for the first 18 months of her life. Before I realized if I threw a steady stream of pretzel rods back at her she'd stuff her gob full and stop crying. I'd mostly leave my body but sometimes I would end up driving screaming at the top of my lungs, "I DON'T WANT TO DO THIS! I CAN'T BE YOUR MOTHER."

I remember one day we had to go to the orthopedic surgeon for Maddie's weekly recastings. I tried to put her in the car seat and to Madison the car seat looked like this. She screamed and screamed and I fought to strap her into her seat, the newborn carrier, got her in and walked into the bedroom and started screaming into my pillow....."I CAN'T DO THIS! I DON'T KNOW HOW TO BE YOUR MOTHER."

I like to think those days are past us. That I've proven to myself that I can do this and I do know how to be her mother.

This summer has been challenging with Madison in some new ways and in other ways which are remarkably similar to the frustration I had 8.5 years ago when she hated our choice in automobile.

There are still some days where my frustration with her makes me grit my teeth and scream into a pillow, "I DON'T KNOW HOW TO BE YOUR MOTHER."

Because the truth is I don't really know how to be her mother

I think the landscaping is done by the same tiny elves who blow cold air in my registers.

The other day we drove to check on the new house, we've done this about 31 times since we finalized our deal and each time we have some incredibly pressing issue we must address at the new house. Like, I just really think there should be toilet paper there. Or, I want to check and see if my broom will fit in that closet. Or, is the ice function on the refrigerator functioning properly.

It's gotten to the point where I feel a little silly making these incredibly important stop ins, especially since we always see at least one or five neighbors who are most likely at this point thinking, "Just move your stuff in already."

However on Monday we drove by and one of the neighbor's had lost all their landscaping in the front yard. The next day, the day we needed to see if all the doors were still in the same place (they were, Thank God) there was all new landscaping. Like magic.

Or like they'd paid someone to come and put it all in, but you can't tell me that's what happened because I'm still trying to wrap my brain around the fact that people have actual laundry chutes and places for their cars to sleep. I just can't believe it, next you'll be trying to tell me people actually hire people to painstakingly remove years of wallpaper from their walls.

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This week at The Buzz Off we made a lot of ice cream using an ice cream ball. I wrote about it here, but these are the parts I left out due to language and general streaming off topic-ness. While we were out in our side yard, shaking up our ice cream ball, it got awfully loud once the ice began to melt. Imagine a large cocktail shaker being handled by a 6 and 8-year-old. Gee, I'd like to imagine that.

Ed and Tile Cutter were quietly sitting across the street on their own front porch (they've been awfully quiet lately. I like it.) and once we'd been shaking for about 10 minutes straight they got up, went in the house and slammed the door.

For a minute I felt a little sheepish, because there have been a few play dates, extended playdates in the last month or so which have disturbed the neighborhood. And you know the whole golden rule, I try to give out what I expect from my fellow neighbors. But we've got 8 more nights of sleeping in this house so, you know, we're making ice cream and you can go in your house for once and try to drown out our noise.

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In other news Brandon sent me this article. Noted without comment.