I'm sick, but it's all good

I woke up feeling awful this morning, but as it's my turn to get up with Boodle and get her ready for school, I dragged myself out of bed at 6:45am. After sending her out the door, I collapsed onto big green chair (oh, you're so comfy, my love) and passed out. The Man came out and I immediately went back to bed.

I woke up again at 10am to vague sounds from the living room. Came out to find Loodle playing a card game, of her invention, on the floor. She had made me a get well card, and had been out there for who knows how long while I snoozed and The Man had gone to work.

Oh, the joy of waking up at an odd hour and not immediately freaking out, thinking of all the danger/damage a child can wreak on an empty house. Worst thing she would have done was draw on the walls and cut off a lock of hair. All recoverable, trust me.

This is something you newer parents have to look forward to. Just wait for it. Endure the sleepless nights, poopy diapers and tantrums. It's about to get reeeeeeeally good.

5 Year Check Up

Loodle turned 5 last week, so we did the checkup today to see how much of an amazon she is becoming.

If you don't know already, I have big children. Freakishly large children. Okay, not freakish, but I constantly get "Wow, she's REALLY tall!". I'm 5'10" and The Man is 6'2", and we were both born of smokin', drinkin' mamas, so who KNOWS how large we would actually have been if not stunted in the womb.

Boodle was born weighing in at 9lbs 6oz (a week late), and 22 1/4 inches long. Loodle was 9lbs 8oz (a week early), and 21 3/4 inches long. They started out being off the growth chart and have yet to return. Actually Loodle is down into the 95th percentile for weight, but still. She came in today at 48" tall and weighing 50 lbs. This is the size of an average 8 year old. At five years old. And have I mentioned she has yet to start kindergarten, and has another 10 months to outpace the munchkins she will be in class with? Sigh. At least she'll be able to whoop some ass if they heckle her.

Doctor is very nice, asks a lot of great questions of Loodle to get her engaged, judge her development. Then Doc turns to me and asks what questions I have for HER. Ummmmm, I got nothin'. Not one single question. How sad is that? I'm used to going in with a laundry list of worries, fears, concerns (most especially with the older one), and I felt like an idiot that I wanted for nothing with this one. Shouldn't I feel confident that I have a well adjusted, easy kid that I'm doing a great job with? No, I feel like I must be missing some giant hole in my parenting, OBVIOUSLY, because who asks not one single question of the pediatrician, the ONE time in a year when she really is there for just that purpose?

Oh well, at least I can be glad that she wasn't able to leave a urine sample. One less time that my hand gets peed on is all the better.

On an unrelated topic with the same kid, Loodle apparently transformed after this appointment into a 13 year old boy. After producing a giant, Dad-sized belch right next to me, she looked down at the photo calendars that I was putting together. Reading the heading on the December page, she asks "Mom, why does it say Jungle Balls?" Hee hee. Oh honey, I can't wait to tell your Dad how proud he should be of you.

Alright Already!

The Man is hassling me for not blogging in a timely manner. After a giant hiatus by him this summer. Ass.

Fine. I was meaning to write THIS anyway.

Loodle and I were listening to a CD I made for her and Boodle. It's by a Christian group called Barlow Girl, made up of a trio of sisters. I know. I shouldn't like them. It's like enjoying Aly & AJ, but apparently I can't resist light rock performed by sisters with a positive message.

Anywhoo, Barlow Girl sings catchy songs about wearing clothes that actually fit your body, waiting for marriage to have sex, and being true to who you are. All things I want for my kids (please, God, burn the no sex thing into their brains).

One song, "Mirror" has the following lyrics:

Mirror, Mirror on the wall, Have I got it?
'Cause Mirror you've always told me who I am
I'm finding it's not easy to be perfect
So sorry, you won't define me
Sorry, you don't own me

Who are you to tell me
That I'm less than what I should be?
Who are you? Who are you?
I don't need to listen To the list of things I should do
I won't try, I won't try

Mirror I am seeing a new reflection
I'm looking into the eyes of He who made me
And to Him I have beauty beyond compare
I know He defines me

I know, right? But I can't HELP it. I fall for this kind of song all the time now. There should be a permanent rectangle on my forehead where they keep hitting me with that brick containing their message (but there isn't).

So I'm discussing this song with Loodle, and I tell her that the girl has always thought her face, body, clothes define who she is, but really it's who she is inside that counts. Blah blah blah, insert moral/Godly tale here told in my best "mom is imparting very important wisdom to you" voice.

Two days later, she gets a mirror toy at Subway, and I see her in the back of the van REALLY checking herself out in the mirror. Teeth, tonsils and all. When we get home and walk in the door, she says,

"Mom, you know that song about the girl who looks in a mirror? I looked really hard in the mirror, and all I saw was me. No makeup, no fancy hair, just me."

I say, "And what did you think of you?"

She says, "I like it."

Me too kid.

But now I'm scared sh*tless to realize JUST HOW MUCH you are listening to what I say.

We're Back...And We're Freezing!

Got back tonight from a weeklong vacation. If you had a crappy Thanksgiving, don't read this post, as your heart might just shrivel a little bit from the jealousy.

The Man booked us on a 5-night cruise to Mexico, which left last Saturday, and returned to the Port of Galveston on Thanksgiving Day. We visited Cozumel and Progreso, ate too much food, slept in waaaaayyy too late and had the best. time. ever. Just the four of us. No extended family. No friends. Just the core.

We decided to stay in Galveston for the night and visit a place called Moody Gardens. It was Loodle's 5th birthday yesterday, so we told her the whole country was celebrating with a big dinner, to which she rolled her 5-going-on-13 eyes. We watched 5 IMAX movies, visited a rain forest, at corn dogs for Thanksgiving lunch, napped, ate Thanksgiving dinner at Rainforest Cafe, watched a pretend volcano erupt over the restaurant, and topped it off with a rafting ride through said rainforest. Today, we woke up at the crack of 9am, ate breakfast at IHOP (mmm, pancakes), and visited the aquarium before having a funfilled drive home, during which we stopped by the mall to pick up our brand spanking new Rock Band. Rocked out with me on lead guitar, Boodle on drums, Loodle on vocals, and The Man on bass. Can life get any better? I submit that it CANNOT.

Came back to hundreds of emails, many blogs to catch up on, and a filthy house in need of cleaning. More details on the vacay, including pics, to follow. Happy day after Turkey Day!

Oh, the Mental Gymnastics

Conversation tonight at Mulligan's:


Me: "Loodle, you got any molars coming in yet?"


Loodle: "Check." Cue giant gaping mouth directed my way.


Me: "Nope, nothing yet."


After big pause, Loodle: "Mommy, I don't believe in the Tooth Fairy, because fairies aren't real."


Me: "No, they're not. Who do you think brings you the money and takes your tooth away?" (I say smirkingly, thinking finally we can end this charade)


Loodle: "It's Santa Claus, because he's real."


Me, in my head: "Oh, crap..."

Why Is This Funny?

I don't know. It just is. Disapproving bunny judges me, and I feel shamed, as I really should be eating more leafy greens.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0pKdXgNDbo


And this. He just screams for the subtitle, "Hordy Dordy". What is with the running?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBvG3kW-_e0

It's Like Night and... Later That Night

Yesterday, my children almost didn't survive me. I was tired. I was hormonal. I was emotional (my dad's birthday-he would have been 68). And the girls were messy. Oh God, the mess.

It started out so fun, and ended so ugly. Loodle is obsessed with the space, so we decided to craft a foam ball solar system that she could hang above her bed. Went to Michael's and laid all the different sizes out and chose which planet needed which size. Yes, she knows all of that data at almost five years old. She even knows what order they go and what color they are. Go figure.

Sounds fun right? So why do I have to go and ruin it, as I frequently do? First, Loodle decides that I should do all the planning for the colors, and my stubborn, you-must-do-these-things-yourself-you're-almost-five side came out, and started things off with a bang. Boodle offered to help, and I said fine. I instructed them on which mats to put on the table to reduce the paint mess. Then I left them to their own devices.

Yeah, I can see now where I went wrong. FOURTEEN paint brushes, two paint trays, three runaway painted planets on the carpet, and many containers of paint later, I go off the deep end. Fourteen paint brushes. Seriously? I pull a nutty and scream and yell and spend half an hour cleaning grout on the dining room floor and scrubbing carpets in vain (gonna have to get me some of this), during which time I was supposed to be making dinner. I sent them off during this half an hour to take a bath (that's right, I left my two girls in filthy bathwater for half an hour-I suck), and when I came to finally get them out, I found that they had emptied the entire bottle of conditioner, that I had just purchased the day before, into the tub. At least their bodies were nice and soft, if not their hair. I just turned around and walked out. I just couldn't handle one more blessed thing.

I still find it hard to understand why I do this. It's not the first time. It won't be the last. I'm living with two kids and The Man. There's mess. There's disorder. There's me trying like hell to keep things relatively tidy and orderly and following my SYSTEM. I should know better than to expect two kids to stay clean and neat during a project where they are trying to paint spherical objects. But I see the disorder and my brain just explodes and I hear all of this nastiness coming out of my mouth, directed at a 7 year old and 4 year old. They don't get it. They don't deserve it. What is wrong with me?

The Man came home and I cried like a baby on his shoulder about what a terrible mother I was. He tried to understand, but since I was incoherent, he actually said, "I don't need to understand, I'll just hug you." I am so keeping him. He got the kids ready for dinner and then he sent me off to play Bunco with my neighborhood group, where I considered drinking for the first time in my life. In remorse for being so awful, and in gratitude for having such a wonderful, forgiving spouse and kids.

Today, SO much better. Loodle had a friend come over after dance class and play for about four hours, leaving me to relax and catch up on housework. Had a lovely dinner at Berryhill (mmm, fish tacos), and left the kids with The Man while I went grocery shopping. Then, I came home. Cue scary movie music. I look in one bathroom and find wadded up TP on the floor that's brown. EWWWWWW. Go into another bathroom and find someone has drawn a picture and written the word Mom. Awwwww. On the bathroom counter. Oh no. In permanent marker. Oh no you di-int.

Scary, crazy, nutty mom did not make an appearance tonight, but it was OH SO CLOSE. She was peeking out of the opening of the cave, sharpening her claws, ready to snatch any unsuspecting graffiti artists and sloppy wipers lurking outside and rip them to shreds. This time The Man was home to step in and save them. They don't know how lucky they are.

My daughter is a sooper genius

Loodle and I are doing what we call Mommy school. She was in preschool last year in California, and we intended for her to start kindergarten this fall. One move to Texas and a cutoff of September 1st later, and she has to wait until fall 2008 to start. Since we moved in April, and every mother of a preschool aged child knows you have to start looking for a school 76 years before you conceive, we never found a good preschool to send her to here. We decided I would make an attempt at homeschooling for a year. Yay. At least it is this child and not Boodle, bless her everloving soul. We would probably have killed each other in the first week.

Anywho, we've been hitting the local library for research material. Loodle is extremely interested in space right now, so most of our books are in this vein. She also went on a kick of mammals of North America, about which I learned quite a bit. Today, I asked her on the way to the library what she wanted to learn about. She said she was interested in a state in the U.S., but couldn't decide which one. So proud. We got to the library and set up at the online card catalog. She decided South America was interesting, so we pulled up books on that, and then changed it to North America. Here's the list of books we checked out:

1. One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rain Forest by Wade Davis
2. South Western Indian Jewelry by Dexter Cirillo
3. Our Continent: A Natural History of North America by National Geographic Society
4. The First Story Ever Told by Erik Jendresen

These were her choices. I even tried to talk her out of #1 because there weren't many pictures. No dice, she was hooked. I was busy marvelling over her choices, patting myself on the back for raising a child with such varied, multi culti interests. I checked the books out, and came back to find her doing another search on the computer. She had typed in:




Wait for it...




"Poop"

She actually got two hits, one for a dog training book, and the always entertaining, ever so delightful "Everybody Poops". I'm desperately trying to get her Mensa application back from the mailman and forward it to McDonald's.

Settling back in

I'm trying to get back to normal after getting ready for and then hosting friends visiting from California. They have an almost 2 year old and an almost 1 year old. Just thinking of their day to day lives makes me a little queasy sometimes, but they are such awesome, down to earth people that you can completely see how they do it all, often with big, fat satisfied smiles on their faces.

I was of course a complete wreck getting ready for their visit. I didn't know which weekend they were coming until last Monday or Tuesday, so you can imagine the whirling dervish that I became last week. Poor Loodle's "Mommy School" was closed for refurbishment, and she spent a lot of time on the computer. Sigh. I'll fill her brain extra big this week. The sad thing is that I had already scoured the house and prepped it for The Man's Aunt to come and see it for the first time. She informed me that the family wanted to see pics of the place with furniture now that we're settled in. Oh crap. Photographic evidence. So I went a little nutty and made the house look like we were putting it on the market. I was so proud of the work I completed the day she was coming. Then she couldn't make it until the next day. Then I got a raging stomach virus. Then the household came to a screeching halt for some bizarre reason having to do with the fact that I am the only one in the house capable of bending over to pick things up. The result was the house going back to what it (should have) looked like before: a place where two kids are being raised. I'm pretty sure God was punishing me for trying to come off as a family that we most definitely are not.

But I digress.

I had a discussion with female friend about what my brain goes through when people are coming. I try to anticipate what EXACTLY their needs are going to be for every single minute of their visit. Are they going to want to go out? Where should I take them? Where do they want their kids to sleep? Is the guest bed comfortable enough? (I actually bought new sheets for the guest bed, when there were perfectly servicable sheets already there, but they didn't MATCH the new bedding that I bought to replace the perfectly servicable bedding that was already on the bed for the last guest) Should I cook? Should we go out to eat? Where to go? Will the kids be entertained? Is the house set up for little ones? (Answer to that: um, no frickin' way since my kids are now almost 5 and 7, and they are preoccupied with bite sized toys for some mystifying reason)

The Man and I were watching Private Practice a few weeks ago, and after some similar brain gymnastics, Taye Diggs (yummy) tells his ex-wife, as he's tapping a finger to his temple, "Quiet down in there!" The Man rolls on the couch in hysterics as I inform him he is NEVER to use those words on me. But, oh, how I need to hear them. My brain, I am sad to say, is as fraught as Boodle's. I just can't stop the whirling and twirling that goes into planning for things. ANY things.

Anywho, the visit went swimmingly (as of course it would after all my worrying and fretful planning, because to say otherwise would have made the worrying and fretful planning a colossal waste of time). We had such fun with their little ones. Although, their visit firmly reinforced our desire to never have another child. Their kids are awesome, and are easy to entertain, take care of, enjoy the heck out of. But picture again my fraught brain attempting to deal with the myriad details of daily life with an infant. This is why I went on anti-anxiety medication after Boodle was born. There was just too much to deal with and worry over. I just can't go through that anymore. It's so much easier to sit on the couch and instruct the kids to go get ready for X, and don't forget to bring Y, because after that you'll need to accomplish Z. And magically (often after using my non-inside voice that the neighbors are becoming oh so fond of), things happen.

The left at the butt crack of dawn this morning, as I slept blissfully away, and the house is definitely cavernous without them here. I spent all morning doing penance for not "educating" my almost 5 year old, and then went grocery shopping. During the trip, Loodle starts complaining about every living thing under the sun, and finally leans over in the shopping cart and just puts her head down in exhaustion. Finally occurs to me to feel her forehead and sure enough, hot to the touch. No wonder she's so cranky. My spidey sense must have been in high gear, because why else would I put my "size of a 7 year old" 4 year old in a shopping cart? Sigh. Now I'm off to deal with a sick child. Nothing says getting back into the swing of things like Children's Tylenol and soup.

She's Doing Just Fine. Relax.

Boodle is in second grade, and school has been somewhat of a stress for her since moving to Texas. We had her enrolled in a Montessori school in California, but decided to give our local public school a try after hearing great things about it.

If you haven't met Boodle, then here's what you need to know about her: 1) if it's not interesting to her, she's doesn't want to do it, 2) if it's not her idea, it's not interesting, and 3) doing it by herself is NEVER interesting. And by "it", I mean ANYTHING. Homework, art project, reading a book, grocery shopping, bath time, playing outside, wearing clothes, cleaning up, going out. You name it, and if it doesn't pique her fancy at that particular moment, it's not gonna happen, not without much ado. ESPECIALLY if it's something I suggest. Oh, she's so like me, and my mother finally has her revenge.

Now, at the Montessori school, this temperament works just fine, because they get to choose what they work on during the day. If she wants to do math all day, great. If she wants to write a story and illustrate it, explore butterflies, read 10 books, have at it. It was either extremely beneficial to her formative learning years to have her in that school, or it catered to her stubborness and we're working with the fruits of our stupidity now.

Move eastward to the middle of Texas, and now she's having to learn how to sit at her desk, listen to the teacher, not talk to/attempt to direct others, follow instructions, and follow through with daily assignments. We had her in school at the end of last year so she could make friends before summer, and the teacher had concerns that she didn't complete in class assignments, didn't seem able to work independently, and didn't pay attention. She has mostly not been disruptive, and when asked what she's supposed to be doing, can tell you pretty succinctly. It's just very difficult to get her to actually complete the work.

Now, this year, same issues, only she's being a little more disruptive in that she's bothering other kids when instructions are being given, or when they are supposed to be working. Many notations have been made about this and sent home in her daily folder. A mini PTC with the teacher revealed much of the same. The teachers so far have been outstanding in trying to work with her and find ways for her to succeed. They've moved her around the class, given her a timer, a checklist, moved her next to the teacher, etc. I'm really pleased with the school so far.

Can you tell that I'm a little bunged up about this, though? I've been worried about how she's going to succeed in this environment for the next 10 years of school, when it's only going to get increasingly harder. She's such an awesome kid with a giant heart and an amazing gift of imagination. I hate so much to see her struggle, and it's all I can do not to step in and FIX everything for her. The other night she let us know she'd gotten another "consequence", or warning, for the day, and The Man let slip a tiny bit of disappointment. Boodle broke down in tears and wailed that she was trying as hard as she could, and just sobbed. I couldn't help by cry for her. My heart ACHED.

Yesterday, 9 week progress reports came out, and she's got 3 A's and 2 B's. Then today, she brings home a certificate showing that she's made the honor roll. And she's had no consequences all week.

Aaaaaahhhhhhhhhh. That's me breathing a sigh of relief. She's fine. She's smart. She can do the work. She GETS it. She just hates the constant need to have to SHOW everyone that she gets it, over and over again.

The Man is skeptical that these grades even mean anything at the 2nd grade level. I of course think that they mean she'll be the next "fill-in-the-blank great person of her generation, and that I can stop worrying that she's on the train to failure and heartache. Yes, I get that worked up about her future, and she's only SEVEN years old. Hence the title of this post. Relax.