When did this happen?

When did the happy little girl turn into the sulky preteen?

I frequently get this look.  Sometimes it feels like for no reason.  I’m sure there are reasons, good reasons.  Things like enforcing personal hygene and correct grammer.  Things like mearly existing, or just being the mom-the fun sucker.  Seriously?   How the heck did she get to be so big?

Builders

We bought a foreclosed home.  From the outside, our house still looks foreclosed.  Except for all of the random kid paraphernalia strewn about.  Our front lawn is dead.  The weeds can sometimes get knee high.  Our bushes double as high rise spider apartments.  One neighbor parks a large motor home in front of our house a few times a week and another neighbor parks a large moving van.  I can’t say that I blame them.

We have a really nice garden on the side of the house.  It’s orderly and neat.  The rest of the yard is a wasteland.  It’s barren.  There’s only dirt.  We’d really like to plant grass but the previous homeowners had a strange obsession with rocks.  There are rocks everywhere.  They are six inches deep in some places.  We shovel and more crop up.  It’s a thankless job.

We have a huge pile of dirt.  I have no idea where it came from.  The rest of the back yard is flat.  I just chalk it up with the rocks.  I wonder when we move out if the new homeowners will be as confused with some of our decisions.  This hill of dirt is rather large.  The babies play king of the mountain on it.  Once Mikey dug a large whole and then buried Nathaniel.  It’s fun.  It’s better than a swingset.

This weekend the boys decided that they would try their hand at engineering.  They woke up early Sunday morning and went out to the dirt pile.  I mean really early.  When I got up at 7, they were already out there.  They dug with their hands.  They couldn’t find shovels and it was too early to ask where to find them.  It turns out I hide all of the hand shovels  because toddlers like to dig in the garden.  When they thought they had a good configuration they turned on the hose and flooded it.  They came in for breakfast, tracking mud and talking about evaporation and absorption.  They ran upstairs and found some stuff and smuggled it downstairs.  They continued digging with shovels and hands.  The hose was constantly on.  Shirts and pants started coming off as they become mud soaked.  There was serious talk about curves and depth and weight and sails. There was giggles and excited chatter.

Finally my curiosity got the better of me.   I walked over to see what they were up to.

They made a race track for their raingutter regatta boats.  This mud pit consumed the first half of their day with racing and modifications.  The second half was consumed with cleaning up all of the mud that had ran down the patio and driveway.  A boy couldn’t ask for a better day–a sunny day, a huge mud pit, a homemade boat and your best friend.

Whacha doin?

Lately, I’ve been Mary-Make-It-From-Scratch.  I’ve started making my own bread.  I can’t even remember the last time I bought a meal that comes in a box or from the freezer section.  I make my own yogurt.  I’m sure there’s more, but just that short list exhausts me.

Dave always takes it one step farther.  He’s decided that we are now brewers.  Last fall I bought 60 pounds of apples.  We juiced some of them and froze some of the juice.  We decided to make hard apple cider.  After some internet research we realized that we weren’t confident enough to put it in a bucket with a balloon tied to the top and hope for the best. We went to the local brewery store which is a few hours away, doesn’t have air conditioning, and I can see all of our disposable income floating into their cash register.   We were filled with knowledge, our arms full of brewing paraphernalia and yeast, and sent on our merry way home.  This concoction is sitting on top of the fridge.  It looks like puke in a bucket.  I know, appetizing.

While at the brewing store Dave bought the stuff to make Root beer.  All you need for root beer is sugar, honey, more sugar, some more honey, yeast, more sugar, root beer extract, some more honey and water.  We mixed and poured and boiled and poured and bottled.  We set our bottles up next to the pukish looking bucket, wished the little yeasts happy eating, and hoped for the best.

One day later we had carbonation.  There’s nothing like realizing carbonation comes from yeast waste to make soda even more appetizing.  Day 2 we popped a bottle open and it smelled like root beer but tasted like yeast.  Day 4 we opened another bottle.  It wasn’t the greatest tasting root beer but it definitely tasted like something from the root beer family.  Like the bastard step child, but definitely related.

The actual work in making the rootbeer probably took us less than a half an hour.  So for a half hour of work, a few days of carbonating and for probably the same price as non-sale rootbeer, we’ve made rootbeer!  The kids are already talking about making labels and selling bottles at the grocery store.  Any one up for overpriced and less than tasty rootbeer?

Independence

We get into prickly situations because we’re scared.  We don’t have the confidence to do it on our own.  We don’t know any better or anything different.  Things become routine.  They become monotonous.  They are comfortable.

Until they’re not.

When you’re little and don’t know how to swim, your either always held when you’re in the water, or put in a life jacket.  Either way you’re safe.  As you get bigger, you get a bigger jacket.  Sometimes you trade in the big and safe jacket for floaties.  It’s really the lesser of two evils.  It’s a crutch, a safety net.

Then out of no where, you just decide you’ve had enough.  Maybe you’re life jacket is too small and gives you a rash.  Maybe you’re Mom won’t let you go in the deep end with floaties.  Or maybe there are incentives.  Things like wanting to play with the big kids, or diving. Everyone loves diving.

Whatever the case may be, one day you just announce you are ready to learn how to swim.  You take off your life jacket.  You’re lucky that you have an aunt who loves you.  She’ll jump in the freezing cold water and demonstrate and hold you up.  She’ll encourage you and direct you.

You’re scared.  You don’t have a life jacket or floaties.  You could drown.  But you don’t.  Everytime you think you’re going to there are reassuring hands to lift you up.  You get tired but you don’t give up.  You’re determined.   Little by little you become more confident, more self assure, more proud, and finally more independent.

Sometimes I wonder

If preteen girls ever have fun. I mean pure unadulterated, unfiltered fun.  Fun not revolving around pretenses, fun not involved with boys and their social status.  Just pure innocent fun.  It seems like there are more days filled with angst and snottyness.  Twelve is a tough age, caught between being a teenager and being a little kid.  Twelve means you yearn for independence and you’ll fight tooth and nail for it. Twelve means you want to desperately fit in and be liked.  Twelve means that you are constantly looking over your shoulder and gauging your reactions to the crowd.

My girl scout troop is very fortunate.  I don’t think they realize how lucky they are.  The girls all come from different schools.  For the most part, out of girl scouts, they don’t see each other during the week.  There is an occasional sleep over or invitation to hang out, but for the most part they don’t see each other.  They know that they can trust each other.  Maybe this is just because they all could reveal equally embarrassing moments about each other.  This allows these girls to feel really comfortable being themselves.  They can be silly, obnoxious, honest, and forth coming without having to worry about what someone might think.

On their own they can decide to see how many kids can fit inside a hula hoop.

and then they’ll do it all over again, and again, and again.

Pickers

My kids are pickers.  Maybe it goes back to my heritage.  Maybe their trying to go way back to their farm picking roots.  Who knows. They pick their scabs and their noses, sometimes even their butts, and who knows what else.

I figured with all of this picking experience, I should put it to good use.  I heard of a local blueberry farm that lets you pick your own fruit and off we went.  I gave the kids a short little talk about safety and what a ripe blueberry looked like.  We found a good row and away we went.   Everyone had a great time.  The older kids picked like it was a race.  The whole time talking about all of the good things we were going to make with their bounty.  I felt like I was in the Forest Gump movie.  Blueberry pancakes, blueberry waffles, blueberry muffins, blueberry smoothies, blueberry ice cream, blueberry yogurt.  It went on and on and on.

Nathaniel was a champion blueberry picker.  He didn’t want anything to do with the berries themselves though.  He’d pick berries and dump them in Jacob’s buckets.  He absolutely refused to even taste them.  He still won’t consider putting them in his mouth.  Jacob on the other hand, picked only to eat them.  He’d find one and yell, “Mommy!  Yummy!  Yummy!” and pop it into his mouth.  It was rather cute the first fifty times.

After only a couple of hours  we left with $50 worth of blueberries in three large boxes.  All the way to the car I heard: blueberry pie, blueberry cobbler, blueberry juice, blueberry syrup…

I’m thinking about calling all of the local farms and offering my kids for the day.  Will work for watermelon.

being six

In our neck of the woods the weather has been glorious.  We haven’t yet opened the door on the constant 105 degree weather.  We’ve seen more days in the 70’s and 80’s with glorious winds that are perfect for kite flying.  This weekend we packed up all the kids and treked the eight houses to the local elementary school and unrolled our brand new Chinese kites.  After 20 minutes of fiddling and a few stomps and crying, kites were assembled and ready for flight.  After about 20 more minutes of running back and forth, the kites were still ready for flight, but not being very cooperative.

All of this running makes a little boy tired.

When you’re six and tired you scream a lot.  You scream because you’re legs are so tired they might fall off.   You scream because the stupid kite won’t fly.  You scream because your brother is playing with the kite.

You scream because the kite’s in the air and you don’t have the string.  You scream because the kite’s on the ground and you have to run again.  You scream because you’re six and you’re tired.  Then once the kite’s in the air you prance around excited and you scream for joy.  Then you scream because it falls out of a sky like a torpedo.  Then you scream because you have to go home and take a nap.

The thing about when you’re six, your memory is longer.  You don’t forget things quite as easily. And if you think you might forget it, you write it down in your journal.

The long days of summer

Sometimes while Dave is away it seems like my days are longer and more arduous.  I am constantly amidst the long days of whining children.  The days seem to be fraught with fighting and yelling, and I’m a little ashamed to admit how hoarse my voice grows.   The days seem to never end because the toddlers have learned how to climb out of their cribs.  I feel buried under mountains of laundry and piles of papers to be corrected and read.  Once I finish cleaning, I just have to start again, because I have apparently raised slobs.  On these days, the days that I feel like crying and cracking a bottle of whine at 10 am, I remind myself how blessed I am.

All of my children are healthy.  Sometimes you have to go with the basics.  Because after a day spent with Ms. Sass, Mr. Poutyface, and Mr. Scream and two boys in the full throws of terrible twos, it’s all you can muster.

I have a husband that works hard.  I have a husband that will take all five children to a pool party alone.  I have the kind of man that will watch four boys while I trek San Francisco with my girl scout troop.  I expect him to spend the day playing with children and referring fights.  I expect to come home to a mess and ordered pizza.   What I find is the complete opposite. While I’m away he builds me a gate.  He ventures to Home Depot alone with all of his boys.  When I come home, the house is clean, the laundry is done, and dinner is made.  He amazes me.  He loves me better than anyone ever could.  That’s enough to get me through the day.

I’m not quite sure

Last week was the kick-off for our library’s summer reading program.  We’re regulars at the library, but something about earning stickers and bookmarks for reading has the kids begging to go to the library more than usual.  I give the kids free reign over their book choices.  They can pick out whatever tickles their fancy.  Sometimes this means that we wind up with 5 “Where’s Waldo” books and an assortment of board books en espanol.  I will flip through the book and look at the font and see if it is at the appropriate reading level.  Or in Mike’s case if it looks like it will be a chore and a bore to read.

We came home with this book.  “King and King” by Linda de Hahn and Stern Nijland.   I niavely thought it wad about two kings that become friends and do royal activities together.  Boy, was I wrong.   It starts off with a rather haggish looking queen forcing her young prince to marry.  They interview lots of princess who just aren’t a good fit.  Then the young prince spots a handsome young prince and they fall in love and marry.  By about page 5 or 6  I realized what was going on.  At this point, I was in too deep.  I could have just stopped reading, but I didn’t want the subject to seem taboo. We read it through and I commented a little here and there and we moved on to an innocent picture book about farting dogs.

This book has had me thinking a lot.  It really isn’t the gay issue.  I like to think of myself as pretty tolerant.  It’s not like I think it’s catchy or anything.  I personally am still trying to figure out where I stand.   I think everyone deserves to be loved and to love and for now, that’s all I’ve really worked out for sure.

What really bothers me about this book is that it poses itself as innocent and harmless.  I read the back cover and the inside flaps, and there wasn’t any mention about the prince finding his same sex partner.  Little by little as you read farther and farther into the story, you realize what the story is really about.  At this point there are lots of questions.  Like why is the Queen so mad.  Where is the King?  Why are all of the princesses so ugly?  Why did he make fun of her long arms?  How can they get married?  How can they both be King?  Who’s in charge?  Was the Queen happy?  Why are they kissing?  Why is there a heart over their mouths?

I felt ambushed and ill-prepared.

I don’t think the book should be taken out of the library.  I think that as parents, we should censor our kids reading, not the library.  What may be too risque for you, may be perfectly acceptable for me and vice versa.  What I do think, is they should labels these books with a stickers for us, naive parents.   Everything has a sticker at the library.  Color books, counting books, California missions and even the holidays have a sticker.  Christmas has a picture of tree and Halloween looks a little spooky.   Maybe I’ll start my own rogue stickers.  I’m not quiet sure what I’ll use for the picture though.

A small little rant

Sometimes I just don’t understand people.  I’m was the team mom for three teams.  I’m team mom for a few reasons.  I have a child that isn’t very good and doesn’t try very hard.  I figure by being team mom she’ll get to at least play part of the game.  I have a child that is very good and I don’t want the coach to feel like he has to play the whole game.  I figure the coaches put so much time into my kids, I’d just feel guilty showing up three times a week and just watching.  So I’m team mom.

I’m pretty sure this will be my last year being team mom.  I spent a good deal of this year feeling like the collection agency.  Honestly, if you feel like team moms make money off of your family’s $5 for the banner or $8 for the coaches gift, you live on some delusional planet.  If you feel like your $5 contribution won’t matter, it does.  I figure that by being McKayla’s team mom I’ve donated close to $50.  It isn’t a big deal, she had a great time, her coaches were awesome.   But still.

What bugs me though is if a parent doesn’t participate, they should apologize and let me know right away.  They shouldn’t get all testy and crazy.  I collected $8 for 3 coaches gifts.  I collected from 9 players. 9x$8=$72.  I sent out emails two weeks in advance.  Two people gave me money the next day.   One week in advance.  No response.  At play off, I walked around collecting money.

One mom told me flat out no.  Umm okay.  She then started going on and on about being broke and they already got the coach’s gifts and blah, blah, blah.  I told her that’s fine if she doesn’t want to participate.  I scratched her off my little list.  Now we’re down to $64.  I walked away.

She then found me and asked what I was buying the coaches.  I told her.   She wanted to know why I didn’t let her know sooner what I was buying.  Why didn’t I take a vote?  Why didn’t I give them more notice? Because she was so broke.  She only gets paid once a month.  She’s broke.  It’s ridiculous that I’d spend $96 on that.  Oh hell no.  I’m sorry I never got the notice that I had to hold a little parent meeting about what to buy the coaches.  If she had a suggestion she could have talked to me.  I sit in the same place every single game, twice a week.  She had my phone number and email address.  I didn’t realize that two weeks wasn’t long enough to save $8.  I just kept telling her, “It’s fine if you don’t want to participate.”   I mean really, I don’t care if you don’t want to participate.  I think it’s rather shitty, but whatever. In five years will it matter?  Will that extra $8 break me?  No.

But now, forever, she’ll be the crazy psychotic mom that just can’t let it go.  All of this over $8.  She’s gotten really confrontational with me in the stands.  She complained to all the parents about it.  How I’m so mean for collecting for the coaches.  She told the coach that I purposely didn’t invite them to the team party.  What???  I sent out an email to everyone.   Why the heck would I not invite a kid?  Just because they have a psycho mom doesn’t mean that I would purposefully not invite the kid.  I do feel like signing the cards:  From the Roadrunners minus (insert kids name).  I won’t though.  That wold be shitty.