It's like Tuesdays with Morrie without all the wisdom
Archive for June, 2008
Escalator
4June 20, 2008
by Abby
in I have some daughters
Today was Thursday pretty much all day and it was my turn to host the Thursday potluck. Now I’m riding high on caffeine and socializing, and instead of cleaning my house I’m blogging. Yay.
As sometimes happens on Thursdays, we did a lot of talking about parenting and how we suck at it. I’ve been thinking about something in particular that I struggle with and I’ve decided to turn over a new leaf. I have a serious problem with regard to how I react to the children when they’re having difficulty with a craft or math or rollerblading or opening a cereal box or a new DS game or a maze or whatever. It’s not the fact that they struggle, it’s the fact that they have to whine about the struggling that just sends me over the edge every time. It finally occurred to me that I have an extremely unreasonable expectation that when they have some kind of difficulty, that they’ll say in a normal tone of voice, “Mother, I am having trouble and I would be ever so grateful if you would assist me.” Instead, they usually use their whiniest voice to say, “I caaan’t doooo iiiiitttt!” and then they stomp and flail. I don’t like that. If I were a mature adult I would hear that and calmly reply, “There, there, let me see if I can help you.” Instead, I have an extremely immature nervous system which reacts with a fight-or-flight response when faced with super-deadly whining. I usually say, “Stop whining and I can help you,” which looks fine in print, but if you heard the tone of my voice and you were a very sensitive lass, you might pee your pants from the fear that my words were actually going to choke you. This is my least favorite thing about myself. First of all, it just escalates the problem and, most importantly, it goes against everything I believe in as far as emotional health. I would never tell them to stop feeling mad or sad or anything like that. In this house, we share our feelings and our feelings are respected. But when it comes to their whining because of having difficulty with something, I feel like they should understand that it’s ok to struggle and they should have an attitude of, “Huh. This is hard. I guess I’ll have to ask for help.” When in reality, nobody acts like that when they’re having a problem. We all whine and stomp in our own way. My asking them to stop whining doesn’t work because then they think I’m mad at them and that freaks them out and then they can’t relax and then they cry and whine more. It’s really quite the opposite of helpful. So I’m turning over a new leaf and I think it’s going to be life-changing. You know, like Jesus and The Secret. Only with less bloodshed. Hopefully.
Just Wondering…
3June 18, 2008
by Abby
in I have some daughters
Am I the only mom who is unable to put band-aids on the right way? You know, by holding the paper thingies and deftly peeling them apart while sticking the adhesive parts to the skin at the very same time. Like magic. Whenever I try to do that, I get the sticky parts too close together, so the non-adhesive part that is supposed to be on the cut sticks way up in the air. It looks like this ___-___ It makes me feel bad about myself. Isn’t part of the fun of getting a new band-aid the thrill of seeing your mom perform that fancy magic trick? I can’t remember the last time I had to put a band-aid on Maya because she just does it herself. My technique bores her.
I have to peel the paper off of both sides before I can even think about trying to stick it to the skin. Even then, the amount of concentration needed for me to do that causes my brow to furrow and my tongue to hang out of my mouth. I’m pretty sure this indicates a deeper, more troubling issue with my mothering skills in general.
Maya Has a Library Card
3June 17, 2008
by Abby
in I have some daughters
She’s addicted to the self-scan checkout thing at the library, which is fine, but I don’t have a truck with which to haul her freshly-scanned books home. She walks into the library, card in hand, and randomly grabs and tosses books at me to shove in the library bag as if the bag is like a magic, bottomless bag that can never be filled to capacity. There are usually 3-4 other people who need to shove books into the bag, too, but she hogs it up all for herself. And then I strain my shoulder trying to carry it. And then I take her home and force her to listen to every single book over and over until she cries. I’m passive-aggressive that way.
Maya isn’t the only one who got a new card; all of the girls updated their cards to the fancy new color ones and we got my niece all signed up with one of her very own, too. I really don’t mind lugging home a giant bag of books. I do mind the fact that each child has her very own library bag, but they all claim their bags are “toooooo heeeeaaavvvvyyyyy” *whine, stomp* and when I make them carry their own, they check out books based on weight and ease of carrying. Not cool.
You might have noticed by how rarely I update my sidebar that It takes me forever to finish a book, but that doesn’t stop me from adding books to my pile. I’m a fast reader, but I really only have time to read my own stuff at bedtime. If I’m reading during the day, it’s kid stuff. You know, to the kids. Or toilet stuff, like magazines. You know, on the toilet. (What? Is that TMI? But Everyone Poops. It’s no big deal.)
We usually have a family book going at all times and I used to let Lena and Liberty read ahead if they wanted to, but that got too annoying and hard to keep track of and then they would fight over who got to read it first and I like to have them not fighting and not annoying me at all times, so now they can’t read ahead in the family book, which makes them a little desperate. If I sit down on my own bed, behind closed doors and start to read my own book, it’s only a matter of a few minutes before somebody comes in and says, “Oh, you’re reading? Then you won’t mind reading this to us,” as if my piteous life has no purpose unless I’m serving them in some capacity. Which, of course, it doesn’t.
I long for the days when I had a breastfeeding infant/toddler/pre-schooler and I could retire to my bed with just that wee little one and, under the guise of trying to get the baby to sleep, just read and read and read to my heart’s content, only to emerge from the bedroom hours later with a shrug for Bryan that said, “Whaddya gonna do? Darn baby didn’t wanna sleep. What’s for dinner?” Now the darn baby has her own library card and, even worse, if I tried to take her to bed and put her down for a nap, her mouth wouldn’t stop running long enough for me to read a sentence. Darn baby with her fancy new library card.
No Experience Necessary
3June 15, 2008
Watching Bryan become a father has been one of the highlights of my life. The first time he changed a diaper was when Lena passed some meconium in the NICU within her first hours of life and the nurse just handed her to him and walked away. It was fricking sticky meconium and the man just figured it out on the fly. Sink or swim. I remember when my now 10-year-old niece was born and we visited her together for the first time. We had been married for almost 2 years and we were on our way to being ready to start trying to have a baby. I thrust that 3-day-old baby at him despite his desperate protests of, “I’ll practice holding my own kid!” With my sister videotaping the scene, Bryan just kind of let the baby flop around on his chest and, if you watch that video, you can hear me saying shrieking, “She’s gonna cry, Bryan! Hold her up, Bryan! Get her comfortable, Bryan! Watch her neck, Bryan!” Sure enough, the baby wailed and Bryan failed the test. It was a silly test, but I couldn’t help but wonder.
If I knew then what I know now, I never would have had a doubt. Those first days and weeks and months he was thrown into the thick of things and he picked up all of the essential skills with ease and grace. Those skills that we can measure are one thing, but seeing him develop all of those intangible good-father skills has been the most amazing thing. And he treats me pretty well, too. I’m sure treating the mom right is an essential component of fatherhood that will come in so handy for these girls when they’re older.
Happy father’s day, Bryan. You have truly mastered this gig. I couldn’t be prouder to call you my husband, and I couldn’t be happier for the girls who get to call you daddy.
TGIThursday! And Other Stuff For Which I Am Un-Thankful
7June 12, 2008
Yeah, yeah, I know you all read Pepper Paints and she already blogged about Thursday’s fun. Too bad. Read about it again.
I missed last Thursday’s homeschool park day because I was in Michigan. The potluck was canceled (obviously, what fun would it have been without me?) Or maybe it was because Dawn has a job or something lame like that. Anyway, we’re on for today and I have an extra kid with me so it will be extra fun. My 10-year-old niece is visiting us for a bit and she’s really sweet so she gets along nicely with my kids and my kids’ friends. The pool even gave her a free membership for us so we wouldn’t have to try to sneak her in. Nice of them. Bryan and I were actually planning to just pay an extra 10 bucks to get a pass for a family of 6 instead of 5, but Bryan didn’t know if she had to be immediate family or what so I guess he stammered around saying, “I forgot, our step-daughter will be with us a lot this summer, so I need a pass for 6, blah, blah, blah.” The kid at the desk was like, “Whatever, geezer, have a free pass.” Yay!
I didn’t say anything to Bryan, but it’s funny that his choice of the word “our” really stood out to me when he was relaying the story. Poor little bunny from a two-parent home doesn’t understand that there is no “our” when you’re talking about step-daughters. Unfortunately, I’m quite in-the-know on all matters of step-crap. For the lie to work really well, he should have said my step-daughter. Right? It’s the little things that make a lie believable.
Speaking of step-crap, I’m making a new rule and I think all children of divorce will get behind me on this one: I decree that our parents only get one shot at “blending” families. Got that? My dad is now going through his 2nd divorce, so I will have an ex-step-mother and 2 ex-step-brothers and 1 ex-step-sister to go along with my ex-step-father whom my mom divorced several years ago. I’m not having anymore steps. My dad’s next wife will be “my dad’s wife” and my children will call her by her first name or Mrs. Clement, but not grandma. Same goes for my mother’s next husband. If they don’t like that, I will go to plan B, which is to refer to the new spouse as “my dad’s current wife” or “my dad’s next ex-wife” or some such other equally degrading term. I think that’s fair.
