Month: July 2006

Sometimes I have to carefully and painstakingly teach things to my children. I have to be there at every step to encourage and insist. Other timess they learn all by themselves. All I have to do is get out of the way.

Today I took the training wheels off of Gleek’s bike. It was like freeing a bird. She was off and pedalling in mere minutes. She did not need me to steady her or encourage her. She just needed me to get those training wheels out of her way.

For now her flight is only figurative, but if next week she jumps off the house and soars to the clouds it would hardly surprise me. She is so amazing and fearless.

Several years ago the City of Orem decided that the street in our cul de sac needed preventative maintenance. Work crews came through and carefully sprayed all of the cracks with a tarry substance which supposedly extended the life of the street. My children have been fascinated with this street tar ever since. In the winter the stuff is hard and they pretty much leave it alone. In the heat of the summer this tar becomes…gooey. Gleek in particular has been attracted to this tar. She loves the feel of it under her bare feet. I don’t particularly like her walking around in the street and we’ve had many an arguement while each tried to assert her position. Gleek also discovered that she can pick off bits of this tar. She forms these bits of tar into little balls which she plays with as if it were playdoh. Only playdoh doesn’t stain clothes or fingernails or fingers. With the high temperatures of the past week Gleek has made a new discovery about street tar. She can gather large globs and place them on our oven-like front steps and they’ll turn shiny and almost liquid. It also positions the globs perfectly for them to be stepped upon and tracked into our house across the hardwood floors. That was yesterday and Gleek was told never to do it again. Today I found a glob the size of a child’s fist sitting on our doorstep. It turns out that Gleek has shared her love of tar with the two little boys next door. While we were out this morning one of them decided to leave Gleek a gift of tar.

So we’re due for another talk about tar and how we don’t pick at the tar. And we don’t make balls out of the tar. And we don’t tell our friends to do any of those things either.

I read a blog today and had one of those “Oh yeah, I’ve been there” moments. Snippet from http://bigslice.clubmom.com/big_slice_of_life/2006/07/an_unwritten_la.html:

After the birth of my children, I felt like I had a shield around
me.  There was this sense of invisibility.  People looked at my
children, and smiled.  They looked right through me. 
For a while, this was a relief.  I wasn’t feeling at my best – I had
gained 40 pounds with my first pregnancy, and wasn’t losing it
quickly.  When I became pregnant with my second child, nine months
after the birth of my first, I was relieved.  I could just let my body
do its thing.  I drew my invisibility cloak around me and sighed.  Now,
three and a half years after the birth of my youngest, I no longer have
a baby in a sling to draw the eye away from my figure.  I rarely have a
stroller to hide behind.  I notice that people are making eye contact
with me once again.
It feels like I’m on stage, and I haven’t learned all my lines

I remember disappearing into motherhood. I used it as a shield in social situations. I could count on my kids to interrupt all conversations allowing me to hide. Now my kids are older and I’m trying to learn how to have non-parenting conversations. I’m not trying to learn “small talk” which is meaningless, but “getting to know you” talk which is the beginning of friendships. I know a couple who does this really well. When they meet a new person they sit down and pin thier subject with an interested stare then ask all kinds of probing questions. Some of the questions are pushy, intrusive even, but they so honestly care about the answers that it is hard for the subject to get offended. They only pin a person that way once, but forever after they remember that conversation and they always have a start for a new conversation when encountering that person again. I’ve watched this couple in action and realize that while I don’t want to corner people and grill them about their lives, I do want to know how to start conversations with total strangers and maintain the conversation. I want to know how to get to know people. I want to step outside the mantle of parenthood and invite others to do the same. This world is full of interesting people with experiences I’ll never have. I’d like to talk to more of them.

Yesterday Gleek’s dreams came true. There was a horse in our cul de sac. An actual horse! I was informed in exclamatory phrases. Such a wonder couldn’t go unobserved, so we walked out to visit the horse. It belonged to a neighbor we know fairly well, so Gleek was invited to take a short ride, but only if she would go get her shoes on. Gleek came flying over to me, eyes bright to ask my permission. I assented and Gleek gushed “I get to ride a horse! I can almost taste my chance!”

Sunday night Link was having trouble settling into bed. I was watching a movie, and so I was grouchy at the repetitive interruptions. Finally he seemed to settle, or at least stopped bugging me. When my movie was over I discovered that he’d finally fallen asleep on the front room couch. I decided to let him sleep there rather than trying to carry 70+ lbs of boy upstairs into into a top bunk. When he woke up yesterday morning he was so pleased he got to sleep on the couch that he announced it to all the other kids. Then yesterday evening I left Kiki and Link behind while I drove a friend home. When Gleek, Patches, and I walked back in the house both Kiki and Link were curled up on the couch pretending to be asleep. Since Gleek was actually drowsy from the car ride I carried her to bed first. Then I carried the half asleep Link up and into his bed. He was awake enough to help some, fortunately. Then I came back for Kiki. She was trying not to smile and give away the fact that she was awake. I picked her up and carried her as best I could. She helped while still pretending to be asleep. I came back downstairs to discover Patches on the couch pretending to be asleep. Everyone else had been carried to bed, he wanted to be carried too. I obliged. The four kids continued to pretend to be asleep until they actually were. If only bedtime could always be so easy.

This summer Patches is often the first one of us awake. Once he is awake I have to be too, not because he’ll misbehave, but because he insists. He gets right in my face and says “Mom! Wake up! It’s Day!” as if daylight should banish sleep permanently. This attitude toward daylight also means I have trouble putting him to bed before dark. This is something of a problem during the summer. He seems finally to have adapted to sleeping in longer. Unfortunately he’s done so just in time for me to start shifting all our sleep schedules earlier in an attempt to prepare for school.

Alright I confess that I’ve been staying up too late. Then I sleep in until one of the kids wakes me up with demands. It isn’t the best way to run a household. Ideally I’d be awake before the kids and have breakfast mostly ready by the time they wake up. Instead I roll out of bed to meet the imediate demand. That demand is followed by another and another as more kids wake up and need stuff. This morning I chased demands for almost an hour trying to get everybody settled so that I could make breakfast. I hate having to ignore a screaming child while I scramble eggs. But the root of the demands was that everyone was cranky from hunger. As usual I realized that I could not get everyone happy before I fed them, which meant that inevitably someone would feel their needs were being ignored while I made breakfast.

Breakfast was made. Then breakfast was complained about. Then I threw a mini tantrum complaining that no matter what I cook someone always complains. And everyone expects me to jump to answer their whims. Four wide-eyed children finished thier eggs without further commentary.

Not such a good morning. I’m hoping to make the rest of the day better, which is why I’m venting in here. Maybe that will allow me to be nicer to my kids. After all I’m supposed to be the grown up here not another tantrum throwing, complaining child.

This evening I was informed by Gleek and Patches that their security blankets are in fact snakes. They had each carefully rolled the blankets into tubes and had declared one end of the tube to be a head. Gleek’s snake was extra special because it had two heads on one end and a tail on the other. All during bedtime snack they regaled me with instructions about how to properly address these snakes. Apparently snakes require extra politeness. In fact, Gleek’s snake required me to learn a special gobbledy-gook language. At least the snakes made putting the kids to bed easy. I carefully picked up the snakes one at a time and announced it had fallen asleep. I then asked the owner of the snake to help me tuck the sleepy snake into bed. Once the snake was settle, the child needed to crawl in bed too so that the snake wouldn’t get scared. It worked. They went to sleep with no complaints at all.

My kids get swim lessons every summer since I’d really like for them to not drown. Locally swim lessons are run in two week long sessions during which the kids attend every week day. I’d much prefer going once a week all summer long. Oh well. The kids love swim lessons. My feelings are more mixed. Getting four kids ready to go anywhere is a challenge even when it doesn’t require all of them to change clothes completely. So for 30 minutes prior to departure I scramble to find all the necessary swimsuits, swimdiapers, shoes, robes, goggles, and hairbands. Supposedly when they come home from swim lessons they remove all of these things and hang them carefully in the bathroom, but it never quite works out that way.

Once the kids are all appropriately acoutured and accesorized, we enter the blast furnace that I like to call my minivan. Outside temperatures are 100 degrees. Inside-the-car temperatures are probably around 120. I suppose I could run the engine earlier to cool it down in advance, but that wastes gas and with all the other stuff I never think to do it. Last swim session was in June and was in the morning, so the hot car wasn’t as much of a problem. This time around we’re heading out at 3:45. Right when car temperatures are at thier peak. I get daily complaints from the kids about the heat in the car. They somehow expect me to magically not make it be so hot. All I can do is crank up the A/C and suffer with them.

Our local fitness center is the location for swim lessons. This summer they’re doing major reconstruction of the entrance, so we’ve been trouping all the way around the side of the building to a temporary entrance. It is amazing the daily rituals that have formed around this expedition from car to swim lessons and back. Kiki and Link exit the car at a dead run. They want to get to the building and out of the heat as fast as possible. They aren’t allowed past the front desk until I arrive with proof of swim lesson registration, but this does not bother them. They entertain themselves by “hiding” in plain view on the stairs. Every day as I enter the building they jump up giggling, delighted to have surprised me yet again. Gleek sometimes runs ahead to join Kiki and Link for this fun. Other times she sticks closer to me. My pace is slow because for some reason the juniper bushes that line the sidewalk on this hike are facinating to Patches. Every day we have to stop multiple times so that he can carefully pick a berry and throw it to the back of the patch. Again. And Again. And Again. There is a Very Important game associated with the berry picking and throwing, but I’ve yet to figure it out.

During the swim lessons I get to go upstairs to an observation area. From this perch I can observe how my kids are doing in thier lessons. Kiki and Link are both doing great. They’re beginning to learn strokes and I’m fairly confident that if they were dropped into the middle of a pool, they could get themselves to the edge without drowning. Gleek’s class is fun to watch because all the kids are so energetic. Particularly Gleek. She is not motionless for a single moment of the 30 minute lesson. She is constantly doing flips underwater or splashing her peers. At least this year she is following instructions and staying with the group. Last year her teachers had to physically hold on to her to prevent her from wandering off and drowning. Today it was really fun watching Gleek learning backfloat. I could see the teacher saying “Chiiiicken, Aiiirplaaane, Soldier” trying to teach the rythmn. Gleek got the positions perfect, but it was more Chicken!! Airplane!! Soldier!! than the smooth rythmn her teacher was trying to teach.

Patches has made the most swimming progress this summer. For the entire first session he refused to do anything other than stand in the shallow water and play with toys. He would scream in terror any time the teacher tried to pick him up. I spent most of that session wondering why I’d spent money on swim lessons so he could play the same way he does in the bathtub. Since I didn’t want a repeat of that, I made sure to take him swimming several times between sessions. On those occasions I grabbed him and took him out into the deep water despite his terrified screams. Within 5 minutes he calmed down and within 30 minutes he was begging me to take him out into the “big water.” Apparently breaking through that barrier was enough. I watched him today with his teacher doing airplane floats on his back and kicking as fast as his little legs would go on his kickboard. He isn’t a baby anymore, he’s all skinny and preschoolerish.

Kiki, Link, and Patches are easy to get ready to leave, but Gleek fights for every extra second she can spend in the water. Once I’ve got my hands on her the battle is over and she knows it. She also knows that I’m fully dressed and not likely to jump into the water to grab her. She will milk every mommy-hepless-on-the-side moment that she can get. All the time she is declaring that she wants to show me “one more thing!” while staying just out of my reach. The swimming teachers are usually highschool students and are hesitant about disciplining young children. They’re not sure what to do about this child who refuses to leave during the time that they need to be greeting the next class. I find I can usually solve the problem if I just ask the teacher to bodily pick up Gleek and hand her to me. This has occasionally ended with me hauling a screaming tantrum to the car, but not lately. Kids can sense when parents are afraid they’ll make a scene. Gleek now knows that scene or no scene, she WILL get out of the water at the end of the lesson.

Dripping wet and wrapped in robes, all four kids make the trek back to the car. Patches accompanies Link through the boy’s dressing room. This makes both of them feel grown up to go solo through that “boys only” place through which mom is forbidden to go. Link usually directs Patches by plopping a hand on top of Patches head and turning Patches head the direction that Link wants Patches to go. I call it Noggin Navigation. For some reason they both love this. In the lobby of the building Kiki claims my car keys and the two older kids dash ahead to the car. Gleek, Patches, and I follow behind more slowly. There are berries which must be thrown.

Upon arrival at the car I have to coax kids into seatbelts and settle arguements about who gets to sit in which spot. I then sit in my seat and try to figure out where Kiki has hidden the keys. She is very ingenious and always has a new spot. Fortunately she is also smart enough to realize that mom is hot and tired, so she shows me the hiding places very quickly. But she grins ear to ear, very pleased with herself. The car is no cooler for the drive home, however the kids don’t complain because they’ve all been chilled by the cool water. I haven’t been, and so I roast. I confess I am frequently cranky by the time we all arrive home. I’m hot and tried and I have to get wet bodies into dry clothes before they sit on furniture. With all that accomplished I sigh with relief and sit at my computer to see whether email has arrived in my absense. I just need a few minutes solitude before the cries of “I’m hungwy!” begin.

The last few days have been full of phone calls, most of which have been telemarketers. These calls always interrupt something and then it takes me a minute or more to recollect myself and get going again. I’ve been wishing they would stop. This afternoon they magically did. Of course they also took my dial tone and internet connectivity. I was facing the dilemma of needing to use a phone to inform my phone company that my line is broken. Fortunately I have a cell phone. The outage lasted about 3 hours. That was about 21 hours less than the customer support tech led me to believe. This is good. Without internet connectivity I can’t see when Howard posts new stuff to his blog.

Howard called me this evening. Apparently Comic Con is going really well. We may actually profit from this venture. I did not expect that at all. I’d actually budgeted for a sizable loss from his attendance at Comic Con. Profit is much better. It always makes me antsy when I watch our financial reserves dwindle. Howard sounded tired but cheerful. I wanted to keep him on the phone and just talk. I miss having him here to talk to. Unfortunately he was too busy to chat for very long. Sigh.

There are only 5 weeks of summer vacation left. During that span I need to get bedtime back to an earlier schedule. The last couple of nights I’ve let the kids all stay up until dusk. Then I look at the clock and realized that it’s 9:15 and all of them should theoretically already be in bed. This happens every summer. Every summer I plan to get bedtime settled at an earlier time. Every summer I fail to do so and we simply have to readjust once school starts. I’m both excited and aprehensive about school starting again. I both love and hate the schedule it imposes.

I keep sitting here hoping that brilliance will strike me, that suddenly I’ll remember an event from the day that I can craft into a clever anecdote or a useful insight. It appears that all of my creative brilliance went into this morning’s completion of a story draft. It makes me a little sad. I really like to have fun entries here when Howard is gone so that he can read them and think of us. Today all he really gets are a couple of mediocre musings and me wistfully missing him. Hi honey, I love you!