Category: motherhood

How she rolls….

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My friend Erin has started a blog, Notty Pea.  You’re sure to love it – just like me, she’s crafty and admittedly not a type A personality.  Go check it out now and follow it. You won’t be sorry.  She’s pretty awesome. I don’t just say that because she could out drink me back in our wild, kid-free days. 

Speaking of introductions, Edie had no school on Monday, so I let her stay up and watch some Downton Abbey with me.  Of course, I crashed out about 10 or so because I cannot stay up past 9:30 without serious caffeine that then keeps me up all night.  It’s early or nothing with me.  Anyway.  She has no such problems.  Who needs the internet for spoilers when you have an 11 year old daughter?  That’s right, the first thing she told me in the morning was everything I’d missed the night before on Downton Abbey.  And she wants to go back and watch the entire show now.  There’s a character named Edith don’t ya know.  Not a whole lot of Ediths out there, at least that she knows of.

So she’s been walking around practicing her British accent, announcing that she wants to live in a manor house.  I think she thinks the show is set in the current British country side. She really won’t hear otherwise.  I hate to ruin a dream world, so I’m letting it go mostly.  Except for the duchess thing. It seems she’d prefer to be called “Duchess” after watching that.

I really need to be more on top of her TV watching habits.

That’s what is currently on my living room coffee table.  Sunday’s NY Times magazine, coasters and a deer jaw she found while going off trail in the woods at the park across the street.

Duchess indeed.

Mama Brag.

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(Consider the title your fair warning of what follows.)
My girl has been on quite a roll lately.  She brought home a stellar report card, making the honor roll again. She made orchestra recitals- a performance that she had to audition for.  She won first place in the paper airplane distance competition in her Saturday morning enrichment class.  She made the cut-off for drama club this semester. And she’s been making some incredible treats in the kitchen on the weekends.
Drama club is due more to timing than it is anything else.  She has looked forward to being in drama club since Betty’s son Ben (now in 8th grade) was in 5th grade and we attended his first play, his first semester at Walker.  Edie decided then and there she was going to join drama club when she got to Walker.  She would tell people when asked if she was looking forward to going to school there, that yes she was because she was going to be in drama club.  When the club sign up list came out last semester, she waited a day to turn it in, pondering her choices for the other days of the week.  As a result, she didn’t get drama club.  She was quite bummed, but eventually she ended up pretty content with her second choice of yoga club.  And when the club sign up sheets came out this time around, she made sure she was at school turning it in bright and early the next morning. Lesson learned.
As for the paper airplane, she’s not really entirely sure how she managed to construct a winning airplane.  Pat signed her up for the Saturday morning class through the Curry School over at UVa. He thought that “Intro to Applied Sciences” sounded the most interesting of all the choices presented.  When I dropped her off for her first class, I was handed a letter and a course description by the instructor and realized it was a kids engineering course.  I also realized that she was one of four girls in the class and definitely the only blonde haired blue eyed child.  When we went to pick her up that first day, she stood in the doorway, glaring.  You have to sign your child in and out, and of course we were behind in the queue.  She stood there, glaring, while other kids had to wiggle past her to leave as their parents signed them out. I actually heard other parents commenting on the glaring girl who was scowling in the doorway.  Ah yes, that would be mine. She’s quite good at math and wants to be a fashion designer – so our attempt at showing her there are any number of careers in design out there in the world utilizing all her skills was not fully appreciated.  However, the second week of class, Edie came home quite proud of herself for constructing the paper airplane that flew the longest AND was the prettiest in the entire class.
Of course it was.
Edie’s orchestra instrument of choice is the stand up bass. She plays this in addition to piano – which was her choice.  She started piano last year, enjoyed it and wanted to continue with it while picking up another instrument.  We talked to her about what playing two instruments meant – mostly having to practice two instruments.  All summer long we talked about it, trying to give her an out.  She stuck to her guns.  School started and the reality of the commitment of playing two instruments hit her.  I was ready and willing to let her give up piano, so when she came to me wanting to quit, I at least thought I’d make it seem like she needed to argue the point.  Only her argument for why learning to play two instruments was hard was that “it makes me have to think”.  Oh kiddo.  You so do not get to quit things because it makes you have to think.  Wrong answer.  You just bought yourself a year’s worth of piano lessons.
And now that she sees other kids she knows playing multiple instruments in jazz band, an ensemble she has stated she is interested in joining, I’m guessing piano lessons aren’t going away anytime soon. 
This cooking thing has got to be hands down, my most favorite trick of hers since becoming potty trained.  I think not having cable has helped nurture this – you see, Saturday mornings when she wants to watch television, there is pretty much nothing on that appeals to her.  She started watching the PBS Create channel and absolutely fell in love with Julia Child.  That lead to her watching Jacques & Julia and discovering Jacques Pepin.  Which in turn, inspired her to walk into the kitchen one morning, pull out a cookbook and make us breakfast before we woke up.  This is fast becoming her new Sunday morning habit, one I can very quickly become accustomed to.
The only downside to this is the mess that she makes.  Oh, and sometimes breakfast isn’t ready until noon.  But that’s okay.  She’s learning mise en place, the importance of reading the recipe and assembling her ingredients before beginning.  So what if that requires the use of every last bowl in the house.  She’s also learning how to clean up after herself, which I love almost as much as I love her making Sunday morning breakfast.  Definitely my favorite trick on the path of independence since potty training.  Now if I could only get her to put her laundry away…..

That would explain the weather.

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The other day as I was puttering about, listening to music via Pandora on my ipod, a song came on that I didn’t quite recognize.  It sounded an awful lot like The Police, but the chorus was too poppy to be them.  Pat called down, inquiring what was I listening to.  I checked the artist name and called back.
“Bruno Mars”
“What?”
“Bruno Mars”
“You listening to Edie’s station?”
“Apparently so.”

I’m not sure what threw me more – the fact that my child had just inadvertently introduced me to new music or the fact that our music tastes have become similar enough that I can tolerate listening (albeit unknowingly) to her music for a lengthy period of time.

We have long prided ourselves on Edie’s musical education.  I steadfastly refuse to listen to her music in the car or over any sort of speakers that belong to me.  When we created the den and moved the entertainment unit into the back bedroom, she was finally allowed to play her music on the big stereo.  Up until that point, her music stayed in her room, on her boombox.  I played her Sonic Youth as lullabies, she has tolerated Smiths marathons on the part of her father & myself, our neverending debate as to which was the better Pink Floyd album, Dark Side or The Wall, was what taught Edie to just go put herself to bed already to avoid having to listen to that One.More.Time.  She came home from second grade, rapturous about a song her friend played, “Crazy Train”, had we ever heard it? prompting Pat to reach into the CD drawers and hand her the Ozzy Osbourne Randy Rhodes tribute CD to listen to. She can recognize The Clash as Muzak at the grocery store.  She can recognize The Grateful Dead playing both Bob Dylan AND Pink Floyd songs. You can never play “Won’t Get Fooled Again” too loud for her ears.

We thought we were raising her right, but there came the day where she wanted to listen to what her friends were listening to.  She’s developed quite an appreciation for Taylor Swift.  Pat is kind and humors her in this.  He’ll even listen to her music in the car. Okay, that happened because as they were driving somewhere one day, sitting there with her headphones on, singing along to her music, she sang louder than he could play Slayer.  Eventually, he gave it up and caved.  (And I’m sure that as he reads this, he’s thinking I’ve misrepresented him.  I’m sure he would say something along the lines of he’s listening along with her as to not entirely turn her towards the crap (okay, he wouldn’t call it the crap either.  He’d be much nicer about it, but since I’m the one writing this, you get my synopsis.), and it while it gives him a chance to check out what she’s listening to, it also allows him to show interest in what she’s interested in.  Yes, he’s a great dad.)

I’m not at sure how I feel about her introducing me to new music.  Really, it’s not bad, after all, I thought it was The Police.  Follow this link and watch his SNL performance last fall. That’s good shit.  That band is tight.  And full of energy and clearly having a good time doing it.  This may replace Justin Timberlake as my favorite guilty pleasure. 

However, I’m pretty sure me taking Edie up on her offer to borrow her ipod for tunes is exactly why it was 74 degrees two days ago and snow is forecast tonight.   

January is anything but boring around here.

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A hawk got itself trapped in the chicken coop this weekend.  The girls were out eating bugs in the yard, so there was no harm done really. And I got some close up shots of a hawk.

Edie’s birthday meant a dinner/slumber party for more girls than our house can reasonably hold. And there were still some friends she wanted to invite that I put the kibosh on because well, our house is only so big. 

Our dining room is almost the exact same length as our table with 2 leaves in it. The chair at the head of the table is actually in the hallway. And you can’t pull out the chair at the foot.

When inviting 8 girls, it helps to include your daughter in the final head count, which is actually 9.

There is a high pitched roar when you have 9 girls in your house.  It stops for exactly 10 seconds when they eat.

How can they eat and talk at the same time?

When a cake recipe says it’s perfect served with milk, that means 9 eleven year old girls will drink an entire gallon of milk with the cake.

9 girls at a slumber party don’t sleep.  Neither do you really.

11 year old girls are more than happy to have Martha’s Moist Devil’s Food Cake for breakfast too.  I used some strawberry jam as filler in between the layers, so therefore, it counted as a fruit serving.  Or so I told them. I also told them they had to eat that entire cake so that I could bake another one for Pat’s birthday the next day. 

One can only have so much cake lying around.

I love how good Pat looks in his sweater.

Peach Pound Cake also makes an excellent breakfast.

Edie managed to find a way to upstage Pat on his birthday, two days after hers, yet again. It’s always something, starting with when she was born and came home from the hospital on his birthday.  This year it was strep throat.  So while we didn’t get a date night like I’d hoped, we still managed to find some time to celebrate.  And I made him a fantastic dinner – Lamb Curry from my More with Less cookbook and a peach pound cake, with the lamb coming from our friends the Roystons, no doubt some lamb that a member of our family helped bottle feed at some point, or at least we imagine so.  We’ve bottle fed a number of lambs at their farm over the years.  And enjoyed eating them.

And with that, our holiday season that started with my birthday in October just before Halloween, is over.  I am not baking another cake until at least March, so help me.

They don’t like the rules either.

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I wanted to follow up yesterday’s post with what happened at our Girl Scout meeting yesterday.  The whole reason I continue to be a scout leader is because of the girls.  They love being Girl Scouts and that is completely and totally thanks to the experience I have created for them. Me.  Not the Girl Scout Organization, who get the credit for our name and some of the guidelines we follow, but me, myself and I.  I still do it because they ask me to do it.  And I’m a sucker like that for those girls.

So, my girls.  I do consider them mine, at least partially so, at least for a few hours a month. I knew the girls wanted to earn the Playing the Past badge because of what it looked like – pink with a purple castle.  I knew they thought that name implied they could do skits.  My girls love skits.  They do a brilliant job of them too, I might add.  When I started telling them in our meeting exactly what the girl scouts thought they needed to do the earn the badge, they didn’t even let me finish.  “Is this history class?”  “This sounds like homework.  You’re not going to make us have Girl Scout homework, are you?” “I have to build a model?”  And so on. You get the picture.  My own daughter threatened to drop out if I was going to make them play by the rules that this organization that is supposed to be all about them as girls doles out.

Needless to say, we once again threw the plan out the window and worked up our own.  The purpose of the Girl Scouts is to empower girls, “to build girls of courage, confidence, and character, who make the world a better place”.  I’ve been told time and again by those within the organization that our troop is supposed to be girl led.  Well, my troop certainly has that.  My girls don’t do anything they don’t want to do.  I love this and even encourage this in them, even if it does sometimes mean I come home and cannot wait to have a glass of wine.  Well behaved women rarely make history after all. But as I said yesterday, shouldn’t an organization that’s all about girls actually be more tuned in to what the girls of today are like?

A Rant.

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I’m sitting here trying to plan today’s Girl Scout meeting for the troop I lead.  The girls have repeatedly asked to work on one badge in particular and I know it’s because of it’s appearance.  It’s pink, with a purple castle. Yes,  I have the sort of girls in my troop that that image totally appeals to.  
The problem I’m having with this badge is that as I read the requirements, it almost reads like a school assignment.  The badge is called “Playing the Past” and the girls are to dream up a character from another time period.  In addition to creating this character, they are to come up with a costume (it is suggested they sew it themselves), immerse themselves in the character’s time period by taking on one of her duties (like hand dip candles or churn butter) as well as complete all sorts of research along the way.  The mom in me feels like this is way too much like schoolwork and homework, of which I think my child already has too much of.  The Girl Scout leader in me knows I will lose the girls along the way if I follow the badge to the letter, because they aren’t going to do the supposedly required research.  It IS too much like homework. They are in scouts because it’s fun.
I’ve run into this time and again over the years with the Girl Scouts – their suggested activities are not always age appropriate, require some serious hands on oversight by adults and/or resemble classroom activities.    For an organization that is geared towards girls, I am constantly amazed at how they miss the mark time and again.  Every leader I know adapts activities for their girls, which prompts me to wonder why the scouts don’t take a look at overhauling their badge activities to make them more age appropriate?  Then again, we are talking about an organization that has trouble recruiting adult volunteers, that this year has overhauled their program so that the focus is no longer on badges but these things called “Journeys“.   Just look at how they’ve reacted towards the girls who asked them to look at where the palm oil for their cookies come from – they famously removed all negative comments criticizing how they handled it on their Facebook page.

As I looked through the other badges we could work on, trying to find a back up should the girls decide they don’t want to put the effort into this particular badge, I found one that I thought might be a useful one – it’s called “Independence”.  It seemed good until I read some of the suggested activities.  “Help take care of a car”, which suggests the girls go over all the lights and gauges, look under the hood for a safety check.  Another one is to “solve a pesky plumbing problem” and suggests the girls learn how to fix a toilet.  The last required step in earning this badge has three choices – stay home alone, run a family errand (by having a parent drop the girls off alone) or go out with a friend, again, alone.  While all of these are great activities, they are suggested for 9 and 10 year old girls. As a parent, I don’t find them age appropriate in the least.
I’ve already had a very tense conversation with someone from the Girl Scouts on the subject of my troop not selling cookies.  We don’t sell cookies because no one wants to be cookie mom.  I was told by my local council it’s not up for the parents to decide, it’s the girls’ decision.  Apparently in the universe of Girl Scouts, 10 year old girls are allowed complete authority, telling their parents what they can and cannot do, rather than having parents set limits.
I am all for children being responsible.  I am all for raising our girls to be strong, independent women.  Supposedly, this is the purpose and mission of the Girl Scouts.  It’s a damn shame they don’t actually understand how to go about doing this.  Our girls deserve better. 

This so-called life.

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This holiday season found us introducing Edie to one of the best TV shows ever made about being a teenager – My So-Called Life.  The show tackles some serious issues – drinking, drugs, sex, guns in schools – and admittedly, when Edie came and asked me if we could watch it, she pulled the “Daddy said it was okay” and rather than asking him myself, I assumed that he had done the research to see if it was appropriate.  We all know what assuming does.  Turns out it’s not entirely appropriate for a girl who’s going to be 11 in a few short weeks, but as we cringe our way through certain scenes, we realize, we are not that far away from them being appropriate, so perhaps we should consider it starting the conversation early. 

What I loved about the show when it first ran practically 20 years ago was how realistic it was – that was MY 15 year old self up there – as if someone had access to my experiences & inner thoughts and actually made a tv show about them.  Watching it all these years later, I still think that’s my 15 year old self up there on the screen, but I also had this earth shattering moment where I realized that I’ve gone from being Angela Chase to being Angela Chase’s mother.  On about 10 different levels.

It’s not just that someday in the not-so-distant future, my own daughter is going to be 15 and will no doubt be very much like Angela – I can already see similarities between them.  I could see her identifying with the character, I could see her realizing which of her friends were Sharon & Brian, I could hear her & her father talking about how uptight Angela’s mother Patti was, and I could see Edie already identifying with how she just sometimes doesn’t want to talk to her mother, how her mother could just not at all possibly understand what she’s going through. I know that stage is unavoidable, that it’s part of her development and it’s not personal.  Heck, it’s even one of the running themes in the show how Angela so completely dislikes her mother.

The very first episode has a scene where Angela wants to sleep over her new friend Rayanne’s house – and storms off when her mother says she doesn’t know who this person is, or her parents.  How can she let her sleep over when she doesn’t know these people?

Right there, I realized I had totally forgotten how it drove me absolutely nuts that my parents gave me the third degree about my friends – where did they live, who were their parents, what did their parents do for a living – I remember thinking back then it was some value judgement on the part of my parents, after all what did it matter what someone’s parents did for a living or where they lived?  I’d have to say that at least half the arguments I had with my parents, if not more, were because of all their questions about who I was hanging out with.  About why they always wanted everyone to come over to our house, why wasn’t I allowed to go anywhere?

We all have things that we swear up and down we’ll never say or do as a parent.  Then, as you become a parent, you realize exactly why your parents said those things.  The ‘because I said so’ stuff.  You know what I’m talking about.

Worse than forgetting exactly how much it bothered me was the realization that I do that.  A conversation that keeps coming up among my mom friends, especially since the kids have moved up to the next level of school – 6 neighborhood elementary schools combine into one pseudo-middle school (it’s called an upper elementary, but for all intents and purposes, it’s middle school.) is how exactly to handle your kids being friends with kids who’s parents you don’t know.  How to handle when they are invited somewhere by these kids.  How to explain to your kids without sounding uptight, controlling  and possibly even slightly wacko that it really would be better if we could just host that child and their parents could come pick them up and maybe stop in so we could get to know them. 

Because no matter how old they are, handing them over to a complete stranger, letting them go out there on their own is slightly terrifying.  And wanting to know where their friends live, what their parents do, that starts to fill in a picture – and you need a picture to be able to let go.  I get it now. 

Just today she came home from school and while she greeted me with a smile and a hug, she immediately went looking for Daddy and proceeded to do her homework near him while he was working – and open up to him about her upcoming birthday party and who to invite and not invite and why and who already told her they can’t make it, which throws the entire guest list into chaos.  Things that Daddy probably doesn’t care about and really probably wishes I would take care of and listen to, but no, I’m chopped liver and he’s the one with all the right answers, even if he doesn’t think he has any answers.   I suppose it’s all part of the march from bringing these helpless little creatures home from the hospital looking over your shoulder to see if they really are letting you leave with this thing to sending them out into the world as responsible, productive members of society, which really is what our job as parents is when you get down to it – and they like to help matters along by realizing that indeed, we can’t fix everything, don’t always know the answer and even resenting us a little bit for it.  And there is not a damn thing we can do about it except realize it’s just part of the journey, that we were exactly the same way once and that someday, they really will understand.

4 days and counting….

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It’s the Friday before Christmas and in the midst of today’s pre-Christmas meltdown, I didn’t realize I was running out to do last minute errands at lunchtime.  Oh boy.  If I wasn’t heading upstairs to sew one last quick gift, I’d be popping open a bottle of something.

I got some serious Christmas baking on last night, knocking a few items off the to-do list like sugar cookie dough to be baked sometime between now & then in Betty’s kitchen for Santa Claus, Christmas biscotti (cranberry & pistachio) for Pat,  chocolate pretzels for Edie and Rachel’s pumpkin granola.

I’m not completely done yet – there still is no menu for Christmas dinner beyond Edie’s requested brussels sprouts and a yule log for dessert this year. Greens and chocolate cake sound pretty complete to me though.  Nothing is wrapped, but I don’t like to wrap early anyway.  Gives you something to do while you drink Christmas Eve.  And just today I finally got the last of the necessary ingredients to make Grandma’s Fruitcake Cookies, which are a holiday standard.  I know you’re wrinkling your nose at the idea of them and let me tell you – they are awesome.  Graham crackers crumbs, dates, pecans, coconut, maraschino cherries, a can of Eagle brand milk, squish together in mini muffin tins and bake at 350 for 20 minutes.  They are the bomb.

Edie still claims to believe in Santa this year, very likely the last year this will happen.  The older neighborhood boys have been cornered and told to not ruin this for her, as they will not get any treats from my kitchen ever again.  She’s heard kids at school talking and told me she still believed in Santa because she knew there was no way her parents would ever spend that kind of money on her for some of those presents she’s gotten over the years.  Who knew my renowned cheapness would keep her belief in Santa alive and well?

Enough procrastinating for the day.  I’ve got to go get my proverbial Christmas doo-doo in a pile.  There are only 4 more days people!  If you still need more things to help you procrastinate, head over to    Jen’s Holiday Homes Tour if you haven’t already. Cheers all.

They can turn your day right back around.

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Yesterday was day  4 of no voice and day 9 of this cold, which seemingly gets worse every day it lingers.  The sun was shining and from inside, it looked like a beautiful fall day.  In reality, temperatures lingered in the 40’s.  It was one of those days where I knew when I got out of bed was yet another one of our marathon days, where it’s go-go-go until bedtime, but I had neither the energy nor the inclination to hurl myself through the way I generally can.  It was the kind of day where I ended up with enchilada sauce all over the inside of my purse in a most unexplainable manner, other than, I’m Becky and things like this regularly happen to me.

There was no outsourcing, as Pat was at a conference and I’d already ‘taken it easy’ the better part of the last 9 days.  No, it was time to just pull up my big girl pants and get on with it already.  That’s just how life is sometimes.

The last agenda item for the day before calling it quits was Bingo Night at school, something Edie was very much looking forward to. When we first arrived, my daughter got her bingo card, her plate of pizza and proceeded to find herself a spot at a table full of 10 year old girls, giving me a look that pretty much said, ‘You’re on your own Mom’.  Yeh, that day just kept on trucking….

Truth be told, I like bingo because I always seem to win. Which I did last night.  And Edie pretty much beat me to the table in the front to claim my bingo prize, suddenly deciding I was worth acknowledging again now that I was a winner.  There weren’t really any good adult prizes, so I didn’t mind.  When I would visit my Granny in the nursing home and play bingo with her, I always let her claim my prizes – it’s the thrill of the win for me, not the goodies.

Winning definitely helped turn the day around, but you know what really did it?  This delightful treat called a cookies and cream bar that was part of the bake sale.  After convincing two children that were not my own to share theirs with me as well as one of their parents, I finally got up and bought my own.  It was an oreo cookie version of a rice krispie treat. Despite her pretending I wasn’t with her, I did stop and give some to my child, mostly so that she could help me figure out the recipe, which turned out wasn’t necessary, because the recipe was making the rounds of parent conversation.  When I got home, the original blog link was emailed to me, which I’m sharing right there with you all, because it’s worth sharing just as much as the simple no-bake recipe.  These are perfect for the next bake sale you are expected to bring something to and bonus, there’s no baking.  I’m pretty sure you don’t want to make these and just have them around, as they won’t last long – they are definitely better in a sharing environment, unless of course you want to eat the entire pan.  I babbled about these on Facebook last night and someone suggested trying it with homemade marshmellows, but as I said there, I’m not sure you’d want to touch the junk food integrity of these with something wholesome like a homemade marshmellow, but hey, go for it if you want to.  Personally, if I’m going to eat junk food, I’m going all in.

Also discussed on that Facebook thread was my mad skillz in being able to get two children not my own AND a parent to share their candy with me.  I’d like to think that even on an off day I’m that good, but mostly I think there is something about those bars that’s so good and so unhealthy that you just feel the need to share.  Try them and see.

 No bake cookies & cream bars.

We made it.

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No, I’m not talking about the election season, although I’m very grateful that’s over with.

We made it through the latest challenging parenting phase.

Beginning at the age of two, the end of August/start of September, marks the start of a phase in her development that is well, difficult.  When she was two and three, it was expressed in the form of colossal bedtime meltdowns.  Every night for weeks (okay, months) on end was a new level of epic.  It was brutal.

Bedtime meltdowns are fewer and farther apart now, but that time of year still has the tendency to bring some new challenge.  This year’s version included a best girlfriend moving to another country and starting at a new school.  A school that was bigger and much different than her sweet little elementary school, where she had kindergartners hugging her when she got on the bus in the morning and she had known everyone there seemingly her entire life, to a school that challenged her far more academically than she had ever been challenged previously and she certainly didn’t know everyone anymore.  Change is something my girl doesn’t always deal well with, even when she has a long lead time to gear herself up for said change.  And she had plenty of lead time for these changes, which admittedly, were plentiful.

Yesterday afternoon, the phone rang, one of the neighborhood kids, asking for a ride somewhere.  This particular one has left for college, college being that little state university here in town, so he’s still somewhat of a regular around here, known to run through the neighborhood on his morning run. He had come ‘home’ to vote and needed a ride back to make it to class on time.  Edie looks up to this young man, so she came along for the ride.  Along the way, we talked about his transition to college, how he had found it harder than he expected.  I looked in the back seat and I could see my girl nodding her head.  That’s when I knew she was getting past the changes and settling in.  Something about hearing Addison admit to struggling with change opened up something in her, and just like that I could tell, we’re ready to move into the next phase of her life.

It was a bumpy transition, but I think it’s safe to say, we’re on the other side.  It only dawned on me yesterday that we just stared down the 10 year old version of the 2 year old bedtime meltdown phase, with this one including some far more troubling behaviors like skirting responsibility and some dishonesty.   It was definitely rough at times, but I kept in the back of my mind something my Granny used to always say, that it’s all just a phase and that it would pass.

There’s no warning that the sweet little helpless baby you bring into the world goes from being physically demanding to mentally demanding in ways you cannot imagine.  That as they become more self sufficient and seemingly less in need of your full attention as to what they are up to, that they in fact still need a huge chunk of your attention, although slightly veiled, because you can’t hover too closely, too openly.  That the transition of knowing what’s wrong with them and being able to fix it to having to let go and watch them move through the world, not being able to fix what’s wrong is agonizing.  That if you let it, parenthood will make you be a better person, forcing you to grow and change along with that beautiful sweet baby that you know is still in there somewhere, despite how hard they push you away.  Parenthood is a constant exercise in letting go, bit by bit, so that your child is someday able to make their own way through the big world out there, because really, isn’t that the end goal, that they become responsible, independent citizens of the world?  It’s scary, it’s exhausting and it’s the greatest experience one can ever have.

Remind me of that this time next year and the year after and the year after that and so on and so forth, mmkay?