Suburban Bliss:: Birth Control Via The Written Word

Back To School Gift

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

Additionally I just plain hate the mall. 

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

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

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

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

You wished for this, don't deny it. 

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

  

Voila! I just saved you a bunch of money. 

2 for $3.89! 

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

Simple.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Summer Fun

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*In so many words.

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

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

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

The World's Lamest Epiphany

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here's something marginally more entertaining. 

Last week I had the world's lamest epiphany. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

So suddenly, I realized: 

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

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

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

My life is a mix of several different feelings. 

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

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

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

Nice Example, Mom.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

....... 

Max is 9, we had a party

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

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

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

Wow. 

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

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

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

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

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

Adam's dad made the cake.

He said it's not his best work.

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

I made the banner using the font Cooper.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pinewood Derby 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Parenting Fail.

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

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

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

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

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

Obviously not my kid, must be the robot DNA.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Halloween 2009: Bacon Edition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Like I said, I like things that are finished.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And best of all, it's finished.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IT COULD HAVE ALL ENDED THERE.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Both just excellent!

Obviously I should have just gone to bed.

growing up

School so far has been going okay. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

We made a fatal mistake that night.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes you can baby girl. Yes you can.

Not really naked but the point is I could be.

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

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

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

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

My Baby! Is in middle school!

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

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

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

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

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

Vocabulary Test

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

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

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

I BET THEY DIDN'T DRINK AND DRIVE EITHER.

Hippies.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Does she have a fever?"

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

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

Fucking hippies.

Cottage Vacation

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

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

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

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

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

Kid: "So and so took my shovel!"

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

Kid: "Okay"

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

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

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

The next morning Logan made all the kids into Burritos.

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

At least they were cute burritos.

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

Ironically the smallest fisherman caught the biggest fish.

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

She just sort of sucked it up and suffered through.

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

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

Peace Maker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Hmm...interesting."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

First Piece Of Mother Daughter Advice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

!!!!!

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

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

....

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

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

Fake It Till You Make It.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Parenting as a village task is something amazing.

Here we go again....

Today was my last day of freedom before summer vacation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

That feeling will probably last 2-3 days.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nighttime Parenting

Oh...hey, I have a blog?

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

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

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

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

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

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

But it could be worse, as it always can.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Handing down traditions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm sure her hair will turn bone white!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Badger Dance

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

Some weird stuff has come into the house since then.

The tiny version of me, without the childhood trauma.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sex Ed, With Mimes!

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

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

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

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

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

"No, it's a penis."

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

Okay.....

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

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

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

Okay....

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

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

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

Here is a partial list.

Another Eighth Birthday

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

Dynamite that makes farting sounds.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And something inside of me broke right then.

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

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

My work there was done.

Daddy Daughter Dance 2009

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

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

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

2009

2007

2006

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here he is deflated. Poor Max.

Here he is full of beans.

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

May I get the door for you?

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

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

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

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

How to: Halloween Boo.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Inside the package was the really spooky stuff though.

Whoa. Spooky!

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

Then here it is solo.

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

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

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

 

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

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

Swelling

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gee, where have I been?

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

Weeee!

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

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

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

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

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

I guess time is the only thing.

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

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

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

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

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

It's like a Pavlovian Anxiety attack.

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

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

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

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

Still, Mostly Fun and Games.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maddie: "Mom, this is fun."

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

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

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

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

I swear we encourage farting in this house.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finally we had x-rays done.

The diagnosis?

Gas and constipation!

JUST LIKE GARY!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"AAAAHHHHH AAAAAHHHHH AAAAAAHHHHHHH"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was like 2003 all over again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.