Month: May 2008

I have been planning to put the kids into tumbling classes for the summer. I wanted to give them something new to do, help them learn new skills, and hopefully provide some structure for our days. Today I loaded all the kids into the car to go and see the gym. I had every intention of signing them all up for classes. But then I had a hard time finding the place, which made me grouchy. Inside the place was full of people. The huge gym hosted a dozen small groups working on specific skills. Every place I looked someone was flipping, or running, or bouncing. The combined effect was extremely chaotic.

Gleek loved it and nearly quivered with excitement, hoping she could get out and do tricks herself. Link was also enthusiastic. Kiki viewed the scene with caution. She took gymnastics when she was Gleek’s age. Kiki was good at it, but the coach pushed her too hard and she remembers it as an unpleasant experience. Patch dissolved into tears at the thought that he might have to go out there onto the gym floor. I sat with Patch, trying to talk with him and identify why he was upset. He was never able to verbalize it, but I know it has to do with his low tolerance for chaos. He is the most introverted of my children and that gym floor looked horrible to him.

I used Patch’s tears as an excuse to load all the kids into the car without signing anyone up for anything. I too, remember Kiki’s experience with gymnastics. I was also pressured by the well meaning staff who wanted to move Kiki into competition training. I was so glad when Kiki announced her desire to quit. This gym claims that they have two tracks, a competition track and a recreational track. I believe that they do. I also believe that most of the staff has come from the world of gymnastics competition, they love it and are loyal to it. If they see a child in the recreational track who has competitive potential, they will encourage the switching of tracks. I know my Gleek. I know that her intensity, small size, and physical capability are exactly what competitive gymnastics coaches are looking for, but the world of competitive gymnastics is not one that I want for our family. Patch’s tears already told me that the gym would be purgatory for him rather than a delight. I needed to find a different solution for our summer.

Later in the evening we had a family meeting where I talked over potential plans for the summer with the kids. I listed possible activities and their costs. A local museum membership, swim lessons, weekly swimming trips, library trips, visits to see cousins, and trips to the zoo were all mentioned. The tumbling classes were by far the most expensive thing on the list. Everybody voiced their opinions, but I did not ask them to make any decisions. I just wanted them to see options and think things over. By bedtime Kiki, Gleek, and Patch were all leaning toward swimming lessons. Link was still feeling lured by the tumbling classes. I can quite happily enroll Link into gym class because I know that he will not be skillful enough for competition levels any time soon. Neither he nor I will be under any pressure for him to excel.

I still don’t know for sure exactly how the summer will turn out, but I’m starting to get a feel for the shape it will take.

Disruptions in routines are hard on kids. The older my kids get, the more they are able to handle disruptions, but a full week of visitors in the house followed by a weekend road trip with cousins has definitely had an effect. Combine all of that with the fact that we can nearly count the number of school days left on our fingers, and re-establishing routine has been difficult.

As my youngest, Gleek and Patch are the most affected. Gleek spent the entire last week in a sort of high-energy bliss. There was always someone to play with or talk to. She moved from activity to activity, never taking time to slow down or process her experiences. This has resulted in some extreme crankiness in the past two days. She has taken to shrieking loudly at the slightest provocation. Today I finally had the space to address the issue. Now when she shrieks she has to spend a minute or two in time out and then she has to apologize to everyone whose ears she may have hurt. Already I can see her reining herself in and trying to not shriek.

The effects on Patch are not so easily discerned. But I can see he relaxing into the quiet and solitude of the house. It is funny how I never notice him being tense when people are over, but I can suddenly see him being relaxed and happy in the quiet after they have gone. He has also needed extra talking at bedtime. I can always tell when he needs extra attention because he claims that he wants to sleep with someone because he is scared. If I ask him what he is scared about, he’ll look around the room and try to think up scary things to tell me. What he really wants is someone to talk to him or read stories to him for awhile. Funny how often kids (and adults too) believe they need one thing when what they really need is something else instead.

Today I spent the whole afternoon and evening at home. There were no lessons to run to, no cub scouts to attend, no events to manage. I just got to be at home sitting in my kitchen talking with a friend. It was lovely. The kids ran through lots and there were frequent bouts of joyful chaos as clusters of children needed snacks, or band aids, or a listening ear. It occurred to me as I sat listening to Gleek regale me with a story about her day, that I’m very rarely so readily available to the kids as I was today. I’m at home, but most of the time I’m working or busy. I need to make sure that I’m keeping space open just to be here for the kids.

Recently Gleek brought home a book entitled “First Grade Wisdom.” Inside the book were the printed beginnings of familiar sayings followed by blank lines where Gleek filled in the ends of the sentences. Some of them made me laugh out loud.

Children should be seen and not…hidden (with a drawing of a child hiding under a desk.)

You can lead a horse to water but … it won’t drink all the water.

Laugh and the whole world laughs with you, cry and … the whole world crys with you.

When the blind leads the blind … they go separate ways. (with a drawing of two blind people walking away from each other. One headed into a thorn patch and the other headed for a cliff with water under it.)

Better late than … not going.

Where there’s smoke there’s … forest fire.

Don’t bite the hand that … feeds you. (with a drawing of a girl crying because she bit her own hand while eating dinner.)

No news is … weird.

The pen is mightier than the … pencil.

My head is full.

It is full of a band concert where Gleeks acrobatic dances in the auditorium aisles drew enough attention that someone came up to me afterward to tell me that he wished he’d had a camera so they could sell the video to America’s Funniest Home Videos.

It is full of all the times in the past month when I’ve had to poke-prod-nag Kiki to do a mere 10 minutes of Clarinet practice, and now she is saying that she wants to take band again next year. I’m a firm believer in letting kids pick their electives, but I don’t want to nag about practice again next year. I don’t want to take Gleek to band concerts next year.

Then there is the way that Link came home from the concert uber-hyper about all things Nintendo because the last song was a Mario Brother’s medley. Link kept chattering on about how he wants Nintendo blankets, and pillows, and clothes, and pictures for the walls, etc. I know he needed help calming down, but so did Gleek, and Patch, and I. My kids are very prone to getting wound up and it is hard to slow them down, to soothe them. At events like concerts I can’t help but notice how quietly other kids are sitting while mine bop around like jumping beans. The comparison makes me wonder whether my kids are that much more energetic/hard to handle than other kids, or if there is some fault in my parenting.

There is also the new infestation of ants I discovered in the Kitchen. That floor needs to be swept and mopped. And there are weeds to be sprayed. And there is laundry to be done. and, and, and

It really has been a good day. I got a lot done. I even took some time out to relax. I think I’m just wound wound up from the concert and need to slow my thoughts down to a walk.

I went to Idaho for the weekend. It was a long overdue vacation for me. It says something about how busy I have been lately, when 12 hours of driving over three days with 4-7 kids in the car is relaxing. The number of passengers fluctuated because I was playing shuttle. I drove my sister and her two kids to my brother’s house. Then I took three of my brother’s kids to my other sister’s house. Then I brought only my own kids home. The driving was tiring, but it was so nice to not be in charge for awhile. I slept a lot at my sisters house. While I slept, the kids had a great time being with their cousins. I did not even touch a computer the whole time I was gone. It was lovely.

Today has been a recovery day. Again there was sleeping. Tomorrow I will pick up my taskload and I’ll get back to work. But it doesn’t seem too heavy anymore. Vacation is good for me. I’m planning another one for July.

This week I had my sister in town. Gleek had a special evening performance. Kiki and I had a dinner to attend. I went to the zoo. I sent Howard off for a convention trip. And I prepared us all to take a trip ourselves. Add to that the complications of trying to get six children to go to sleep in two bedrooms when putting two awake children in the same room virtually guarantees that they will not fall asleep. Bedtime has been rather like one of those riddles where you have multiple animals and a single boat which can’t hold them all at once, only certain animals can not be left alone together. Every night we’ve managed to figure it out, but every night the solution has been different.

The breakage in routine has also interfered with the brainspace that I use to form blog entries. So instead of thinking up something myself, I’m just going to tell the anecdote that I told to Howard and that he said I should blog.

I was at the zoo with my sister, her two kids, and Patch. The day was chilly and rainy, so we took refuge in the Small Animal House. Most of the visitors in the park had the same idea. The place was pretty crowded. My sister and I quickly noticed a dichotomy of interests. Her daughter was interested by large mammals like giraffes. Patch was far more interested in snakes, turtles, lizards, and bugs. He was in heaven in the Small Animal House. He led me from window to window. He pointed to each animal and demanded to know what it was called. I’d read the plaque next to the exhibit and give him the name. Sometimes we would stay for a minute to watch the animal other times we moved on immediately. The pace picked up and the demands of “What’s this?” flew fast and furious. We wound our way to the very last exhibit. Then Patch turned to me with wide eyes and said “How do you know all this stuff?” Apparently he thought I was just pulling all these names out of my own memory. I pointed out the plaques and told him I was reading. He thought that was pretty cool too.

My mother sometimes tells the story of the day that she returned to her car to find a little old lady laying down in the back seat. The lady looked up at my mother and said “Shh! I’m hiding!”

As my mother helped the lady climb out of the car and walk down the block back to the nursing home, the lady explained with a twinkle in her eye. “I know I can’t really leave, but sometimes I like to hide for a little while.” They were met at the nursing home door, by a loving attendant who had just noticed the escape. The old lady hobbled on the arm of her attendant, listening to the mild scolding for running away again, and she sent a cheerful goodbye wave to my mom.

I feel a deep sympathy for that little old lady. Sometimes I too need to hide. It isn’t that my life is bad or that I’m oppressed, quite the contrary. I just need to hide a little bit, give myself some space, be alone for awhile. The hiding place may be a book, or my backyard, or my bedroom, or the bathroom, or the grocery store, or a blog entry, wherever the hiding place may be, when I come back I can be glad for my life again.

We came to the pool because I’d driven my sister to visit a friend for lunch. My sister and her kids were visiting for an hour. Patch, Gleek, and I were waiting. We figured that the combination of flowering trees, rocks, grass, and water made this about the best waiting place available. I was right. Both kids were drawn to the water like little metal filings to a magnet. They only paused momentarily for permission before dipping their fingers in. Then Gleek began to do laps around the stone edge of the pool. I watched her walk. That was when I saw it. The brownish lump that Gleek walked past with only six inches clearance was not a lump of dirt. It was a duck. A female mallard duck to be exact. She was curled up in the shade of the rock, completely unperturbed by the chattering seven-year-old passing her by.

I pointed out the duck to the kids. They were instantly riveted. Gleek inched her way closer until she was a mere foot away from the feathered creature. The duck was so completely unconcerned that she actually tucked her head under a wing and attempted to resume her nap. The nap was short lived though because Gleek was tempted ever closer to this living, breathing example of nature. I lured Gleek away to look at a moth in the grass. She picked up the moth carefully, so as not to hurt it, and gave it a new home on some flowers. Even bugs need beauty. When we turned back to the pond, the duck had taken to the water. The kids both watched her paddle and drink. We wished for some bread to throw, wondering if this duck might be hungry. Gleek decided that we should come back sometime with bread and if the duck was not there, we would just eat the bread.

So we paddled our fingers in the water some more. And the kids took off their shoes because it was a little warm. They ran barefoot across the soft grass, admiring the statues, and jumping off of rocks. In short order they asked the inevitable question. Could they pleas put their feet in the water? I said they could. Instant splashing. Kickety-kick went two pairs of little feet. The whole pool turned bumpy. Bob bob bob went the duck. “The duck is like a boat!” declared Patch. I agreed that the duck was indeed like a boat, and then wondered out loud if maybe the ducks tummy was getting seasick. Instantly two sets of feet stopped kicking as their minds went to work pondering the implications of a seasick duck.

This was when my sister and her two kids arrived. This was just as well because Gleek was in the process of seeing if she could touch the bottom of the pool (almost) and she nearly fell in. It was only a matter of time before, like the camel with his nose in the tent, they’d wiggle their way into swimming in that pond with the duck. So we waved goodbye to the duck and went on our way.

In order to give my sister space to sleep, I’ve put Link and Patch on a big airbed in the girls’ room. Gleek took one look at that cool new bed and demanded to sleep there as well. Getting them to settle down into sleep has been a bit tricky, but there is definite cuteness to offset the additional stress. Last night Gleek and Patch were laying on their pillows and talking to each other. They had this whole involved game in which they were special cloudland people who got to sleep on clouds. There has also been the inevitable tickling and giggling. Usually I have to haul at least one of the kids out of the bed so that the others can fall asleep. Some nights I have to let them go to bed one by one. But eventually they do fall asleep. Then I can go stand in one spot an look at my three airbed sleepers and Kiki sleeping in her own bed. It is a beautiful sight.

Poster

This is the back cover image from my book Hold on to Your Horses.  It is now available through our online store
as a poster if anyone wants to have one.