Archive for the ‘reciprocal affection’ Category

Four short stories


2012
05.11

My kids have been cracking me up lately. Here are a couple of sweet/funny/crazy things they have said and done…

Rose: Mom, there was a bake sale at school today.
Me: Oh, dang, Rose, I am sorry, I forgot I was supposed to send something.
Rose: Mom, you don’t have to be sorry, I only needed to bring something if I wanted to. It’s okay.
She’s such a sweet kid.  Really.  She’s so lovely and concerned with everyone’s feelings and really doesn’t want anyone to be upset.  A teacher at school stopped my mom on the playground to comment on what a “kind child” Rose is.  Those were her exact words.

Dillon: [getting in the shower] Mom, what is a coop detot?
Me: Uh, do you mean coup d’etat?
D: Yeah. [implicit ‘duh, mom…’] What is it?
These kinds of questions get me – because I have to tread the fine line between explaining something to him like he’s ten (and therefore talking down to him) and remembering that he’s ten and trying not to go too far into the weeds in my explanation…

Me: [Laying out clothes.] So, do you want to wear this shirt to school tomorrow?
Rose: Uh, no mom, I need to wear something I haven’t worn for a while. How about this one?
Don’t get me wrong, she’s always been extremely into clothes.  From pretty much the first thing I bought her.  (And here.  And probably a bunch of other places on this blog.)  But she’s never said anything that indicated that other people were paying attention to what she was wearing.  Heck, she’s had dresses and outfits she begged to wear over and over.  There’s a little sense of foreboding about this one…

Dillon and Charles traveled to Madison to see Neil deGrasse Tyson speak. More on that on Charles’ blog, I am sure – it is a great story and I need him to write it down. Rose just couldn’t miss school after missing a week to go to Louisiana with her grandma, so we had a girls’ day after school… We ran an errand to the Girl Scout store to pick up some badges for the troop, then we stopped at Maxie’s for dinner. We walk in, and Talking Heads’ Take Me To The River is playing. She immediately breaks into this funny little dance routine, and is totally rocking out as we are standing in front of the host station. Then the manager guy, who is behind the host station, breaks into a dance with her. It was pretty freaking awesome, and a testament to everyone – even complete strangers – pretty much loving Rose from the minute they meet her. We picked up fish and chips for her and sweet potato fries and collard greens for me, had a fabulous dinner, and spent the evening re-dying her pink highlights and fixing her manicure. We had an awesome night!

Aquaponics update: and then there was one.


2012
03.12

We are down to one fish in the aquaponics experiment out of the three we started with.   Here’s an excerpt of Dillon’s paper on the topic:

I started the project with three fish.  My fish are a chocolate oranda named Shadow, a redcap oranda named Ron, and a butterfly tail goldfish named Shy. [A bunch of research paper deleted here.]  I had a number of problems with the fish part of the experiment, though I was on the lookout for these problems thanks to my reading.  I first had a pH problem, because the pH of the water would spike and get too high for the fish, and we had to lower the pH by using a product called pH down.  Then I had a temperature problem, and the water was too cold, so we got an aquarium heater. Finally, I had an oxygen problem, which I realized because the fish were gasping for air at the top of the tank.  We got an oxidizer for the fish to solve this problem. We lost two fish during the experiment probably due to these problems, or the fluctuations in these elements.  The book I was working from, Aquaponic Gardening, told me to expect this and suggested to gardeners to start their cycle with goldfish rather than tilapia or perch because you often lose fish when you are starting up your system before all of the levels are regular enough and stable.

So, Shy and Ron are no longer with us.  What the writing above doesn’t really tell you is the level of hysteria that my kids felt at the death of Shy.  They kept it together a bit more when the second one, Ron, died.  (Poor Ron Weasley, I think it wasn’t as sad because they didn’t really notice he was sick, Shy was clearly not doing well for a while.)  And Shadow is looking a little shady.  But we’re testing everything and the water seems to be habitable for the fish, with an appropriate pH, ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates.  I’ve had a number of (even long-lived) goldfish in my life, and never kept them in such luxury or cared about the chemicals in the water, which often wasn’t changed particularly regularly.   Did we just get lemons in the goldfish department?  It’s only been six weeks – I thought for sure we could keep at least one alive for a couple of months.  Thoughts?

 

Tread Lightly


2012
02.28

Sometimes, as a parent, you just hear something happening in the other room and you don’t want to mess it up by actively noticing.  It is the Hawthorne Effect of parenting, as soon as you are observed observing the event, it changes it.

I had to risk a quick photo, though, tonight when I told the kids it was reading time and Rose headed into Dillon’s room and cuddled up next to her brother and began to read out loud (you know, like you do when you are a second grade reader).  I think D was initially ignoring her – he can ignore anything when he has a book in his hand – but then he started helping her with the words she got stuck on.

Kids and a Book

So they just hung out and read.  Happily, they ignored me completely when I silently snuck in and took the picture.   Rose just kept reading to her big brother.  And I might have let them stay up a little later than usual because they were being so awesome.

Comfort Zone


2012
02.25

Took the kids rollerskating today.  It was someone else’s idea, one of the Girl Scout troop leaders, and so a bunch of my girl scouts were going, and Rose wanted to, also.  She was really, really excited about it.

But here is the thing.  I haven’t been on roller skates since I was 12 years old. Literally.  I haven’t ice skated either.  These are not even things I was good at when I was a kid.  So I was a little apprehensive about going.  But Rose wanted to do it, so I just decided to try.  Siblings were also invited, so Dillon, Rose and I picked up Auntie Kate and headed to the roller rink to meet a bunch of our friends.  I had warned the kids that we were going there to skate, we weren’t going to play arcade games or do any of the other stuff, and when we got bored we could leave.

The kids have skates, but Kate and I rented some.  And it was fun.  I fell on my butt a couple of times (though one of them was one of those situations where Rose and I were holding hands and I am not sure which one of us lost our balance but we went down together), but all around we had a great time.  We skated until the skating was over, for about two and a half hours with a short break for water.  Dillon and Kate were looking really great, and zipping around in the fast part of the circle.  Rose and I were in the outer orbit, and she was being my cheerleader (“you are doing really good, Mommy!”) and falling down a LOT.   But she kept getting right back up and having an awesome time.  Kate was working out fancy moves like spinning around and stuff, despite also not having been on skates since she was a kid.  I have a feeling she was much better at it than I ever was back then.

I had worried about going and how stupid I would look on skates, falling down and totally clumsy as an adult, but it was really silly of me to consider not going because of that.  And so, today I’ve been reflecting on how being a mom has often pushed me beyond my comfort zone.  From the moment I was in the delivery room in stirrups, trying to push a twelve pound baby out, and not having the energy to feel self-conscious that twenty doctors, nurses, and medical students were all taking turns looking at my girl parts, there has been a part of me that realized – you just have to get over some of this nonsense.  Just be a grownup and deal with it, and maybe it won’t be so bad…  (Side note – that whole labor situation – it was totally that bad.)

There have certainly been crappy ways that being a mom has made me grow up (I’ve had to deal with a lot more puke and blood and other bodily fluids than I ever really thought I could.  I’ve been peed on by a two-year-old on an airplane and just had to deal with it).  Mostly, I can laugh about that stuff.

But there have been many more ways that my kids have pushed me beyond what is easy and beyond what I would rather do.  Those things have probably made me a better person.  Their questions have made me want to learn the answers.  Their tough conversational topics (thanks, NPR, for starting a lot of very awkward conversations in the car) have made me clarify my positions and think through my beliefs and feelings.  Because I want to raise kids who would rather play outside than on a computer, we spend a lot more time outside, and a lot less time with screens than my default workaholic would otherwise.  I try new things because I want the kids to.  I have new experiences so they will be open to them.  And today, I was very frank with them about being nervous about rollerskating, and then we went anyways.

I think that might be one of the most important lessons for them – even though something scares you a little, if you power through and try it, you might have a great time.