Parenting Archives - Page 10 of 18

Of art and science and plum tarts

September 22, 2014 No Comments

I have one kid who built a computer over the summer, and another who read a dozen books. Thick books. With big words.

You all know I’m far more likely to boast about them being able to burp the alphabet than anything really constructive, so don’t worry about some new bragging trend on my part.

At the same time as they’ve been developing these oddly productive habits, we seem to be having more long conversations about colleges: which ones are best for what fields of study, how competitive they might be, and whether they’re nearer a beach or a ski slope.

Neither Mike nor I want to break the news that we’ve actually been kind of sucky about the whole saving-for-college thing. Instead we nod and smile, and wonder how many kidneys we’ll have to hawk when it’s time to cough up the scratch for tuition and fees.

Parenting

It’s kind of like I’ve already won the lottery

September 19, 2014 No Comments

People are really patient around here sometimes.

Take our kid, Jack. No matter what you want to talk about, Jack will patiently wait for the opportunity to tell you how it relates how great Lamborghinis are, what his favorite Lamborghini is, and how many Lamborghinis he plans to buy the next time we win the lottery.

And he’s perfectly patient with the fact that we really mess up our odds of winning the lottery by not ever buying lottery tickets.

“Mom, there’s a story behind the Lamborghini, did you know?”

The fact that the Lamborghini has been the topic of conversation on every car ride we’ve taken in the last seven months or so, and I hadn’t heard this, is what’s kind of amazing.

Parenting

I don’t really know what anyone is talking about

September 5, 2014 No Comments

Last year Jack kept using the phrase going ham, which took a few weeks for me to figure out meant throwing oneself into the task at hand.

As in: Lookit that dog, going ham with the Frisbee.

Or: I saw this guy in his car at the stoplight, going ham with the music on his radio like no one was watching.

But apparently less often: I’m going to go all ham and get my homework done before dinner.

I thought it was kind of a micro slang thing, a term he and his buddies starting using at school for no discernible reason other than it added another check on the teen cred score card. I wasn’t sure why they settled on cured pork for their idiom, but that was beside the point. Even if it made sense, it’s hard to get anything to really go viral if you’re only working with the teensy student body that makes up his school.

Nonsense, Parenting

Teenagers might one day be the death of me

September 2, 2014 No Comments

Our wedding anniversary was Sunday, and Mike and I slept in separate rooms.

It wasn’t like that. He did spend the better part of an hour trying to make a fire for me in a teensy stove, but there wasn’t much for kindling and the wood may have been a little wet. The room would be warm enough anyway once all the girls returned to the cabin.

When I looked up this place online I read about a lodge that sleeps 50 on the shores of Alturas Lake with a view of the Sawtooth Mountains. There would be en-suite bathrooms, linens and towels and hand stitched quilts and a staff to serve meals in a common dining area.

It sounded rather swanky for a labor-day weekend orientation for twenty or so Rotary foreign exchange students, but maybe the intent was to start their year off with a bang.

In retrospect the fact that I thought we were staying in that lodge is a little funny.

Parenting

Stupid mice and their dumb cookies anyway

August 29, 2014 No Comments

Colin wouldn’t let me walk him into sixth-grade on Monday, robbing me of the very last time I would get to help anybody unpack a gargantuan backpack on his first day, and then take seven selfies with a scowling child at his new desk.

He wouldn’t even let me post the photo on Facebook that I took of him standing with his best friend on the playground before the bell.

My youngest child’s steadfast refusal to play along with things like first-day-of-school rituals, or to get emotional about anything at all rarely bothers me. Aside from appreciating the opportunity it gives me to tease him, I don’t go all in for that kind of thing either.

Usually, I mean. I usually don’t go all in for the mushy emotional thing. Lately, though, if I’m awake at 4 am, I’m dwelling on the fact that I will never again have a warm little person ask me plaintively if he can cuddle with his dad and me because he can’t sleep, or because he had a bad dream.

Parenting

Ode to Autumn: A crappy poem from a happy mom

August 25, 2014 No Comments

In mere weeks, we’ll be aghast at Halloween decor
Displayed in stores come mid September,
Roll our eyes at Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter schwag.
Too early, we’ll say. Every year, out early.

But oh, Autumn, the newspaper inserts that heralded:
Discounts on scissors, white school glue, colored pencils,
3-holed binder paper, spiral notebooks, both college-ruled,
Dried my throat, made my fists clench. When, dear God, when?

Parenting

Speaking of pot …

August 22, 2014 No Comments

So, as I mentioned, last week Jack asked his dad and I for our thoughts about pot.

Being the seat-of-our-pants kind of parents we are, it hadn’t occurred to either of us to coordinate what we were going to say when this subject inevitably arose. That was stupid. Both of us at Jack’s age were doing things that could have had consequences. We knew parenting teens could get bumpy.

We have had conversations about how little we looked forward to dealing with teenage shenanigans. These conversations weren’t as productive as they should have been. They tended to favor nostalgia over strategy, and end with prayers of gratitude that no one could post selfies on social media when we were teens.

Other than that we’ve been living in happy-sparkly-unicorn land where gumdrops grow on trees and don’t cause cavities, and we’ll use a magic wand to deal with teenagers when the time comes.

Parenting

Judgmental Jerkwads and conversations about pot

August 18, 2014 No Comments

Jack asked Mike and I our thoughts on marijuana this weekend, I had two initial responses:

(1) I need to tread carefully here, lest one of us ends up sounding as evasive as Bill Clinton, and
(2) Ooh, yay! Another blog topic.

Mike thinks a blog on talking to our teenager about pot has the potential to draw a little ire, and he’s understandably a little anxious about my broadcasting this kind of conversation to the whole, wide world.

Parenting

No matter how hard you work, poop happens

August 6, 2014 No Comments

People discipline other peoples’ children all the time.

I’ve done it. It was called for. When the neighbor kids were climbing on their garage I told them to get down. They were first or second graders, or something, who couldn’t possibly be doing anything productive on top of a garage.

When they sassed me in response, I assured them yes, I was the boss of them, by virtue of the fact that every sober parent on the planet would agree with me, as would any emergency room physician.

And then I repeated, rather emphatically, that they were to climb the hell down from the garage roof right now or things were going to get serious.

I’m a parent now, and realize everyone knows get serious really means: I am going to keep hurling empty threats at you until you get tired of listening to me and give me WHAT I WANT.

Fortunately these kids didn’t wait to find out what get serious meant. They climbed down.

Parenting

Not that there’s anything wrong, really, with Texas

July 28, 2014 No Comments

To our darling son who wants to go to a gaming convention in Texas next summer – an epic road trip with his friend and his friend’s brother who will technically be an adult by that time, and doubtlessly fully capable of assuming all the responsibility for your posse:

We do trust you. It’s not that. And dad sincerely apologizes for snorting Pepsi out his nose at your heartfelt plea. That was insensitive of him.

Our ‘no’ should not be taken as a reflection our trust or lack thereof. Nor is it a statement about your friend, or your friend’s brother. Or their whole, entire family or their ancestors for that matter. We’ve never met these people, so we obviously can’t form an opinion about them.

You asked me “What could possibly happen” to two boys who will be sixteen by then, and a just-recently-turned-eighteen year-old on a road trip from Idaho to Texas.

That’s an excellent question.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: