Mom Fail

I screwed up today. That, of course, is not big news. I screw up in one way or the other every day. But today's screw up was deeper, and came with one of those revelatory, "Duh!" lightbulb kind of moments.

This morning, Matt and I attended the kindergarten parent breakfast with the boys. They were so excited because all of the classes we're going to be singing for the parents at the breakfast. Hays was particularly excited because they were singing Skinnamarink (you know, skinnamarinkydinkydink, skinnamarinkydo, I love you...), and we've always sung that song. So he couldn't wait to get up there. Until he was up there.

I saw it coming. I saw the lip start to tremble, I saw the eyes start to water, and I knew exactly what was about to happen. Sure enough, halfway through the first song, he bolted off stage and ran to me. And did I hold him and tell him it was okay and give him a reassuring hug? No, I didn't- and that was a mom fail.

My first reaction was, "Oh crap, of course, it's my kid that's not behaving. It's my kid that's acting out." So my response to him was, "Hays! Stop! You're fine. Get back up there and do what you're supposed to do! You're embarrassing me!" And when he refused, I said, "Fine. just sit there and be quiet." Ugh, such fail. You can judge me, it's okay. I promise I'm judging myself just as harshly.

Luckily, that was when I had my completely obvious, but hereforto unseen to me revelation. He's not acting out- he's scared. He looked out at that sea of faces and flashbulbs, and got a case of good old fashioned stagefright. He didn't run to me because he's an uncooperative brat, he ran to me because he was overwhelmed.

That's when I did the right thing. I leaned over to my little buddy, put my arm around him, and said, "It's okay, baby, I know you're just nervous. I understand. You can stay here with me if you need to." And he told me, "Mommy, I don't like everybody looking at me and smiling at me. It makes me feel shy." I guess I didn't recognize it at first, because it's not a feeling I've ever had. I have never had a problem being the center of attention, and always relished being on stage. I love an audience. So do Will and Mason. But not my Haysie, and that's okay.

And what do you know, as soon as I reassured him, they started in on Skinnamarink, and my boy took off like a rocket, took his place right there in the middle of the front row, and sang his little heart out. Eyes locked on me, pointing directly at me during the "I love you" part of the song. Redemption and forgiveness right there in the primary school cafeteria.

When he came off the stage, I told him what an awesome job he did. And I told him I was sorry that I got on to him for being nervous, and that I was so proud of him for being so brave. I messed up today, but I learned something in the process. They're not always going to be exactly what I think they should be. Sometimes they'll be shy when I think they should be bold. Sometimes they'll be bold when I wish they'd be reserved. But I always want to be their port in the storm, their safe spot when everything gets to be a little too much, and I always want to be their biggest fan when they overcome their fears and shine like stars.

This Is Where We Used to Live...

This morning I had a doctor’s appointment on the other side of town. On a whim, I decided to drive past the first house Matt and I lived in when we moved to Athens 12 years ago. It looked a little different, but it sure did recall some sweet times.

It wasn’t a particularly impressive house. In fact, it was downright tiny, but it had its charms. It was a little blue, two bedroom house with a bit of a front porch, and a patch of lawn nestled amongst far more stately dwellings in a historic part of town. I loved being surrounded by gorgeous hundred year old homes on tree-canopied streets. And I loved that little house, right down to the orange laminate countertops in the minuscule kitchen.

It was special, you know? It was our first place together. We were 22, poor as church mice and living in sin, but we were excited and hopeful. So many of our big things happened there. I started my first teaching job, Matt graduated college, we got our sweet dog, we got engaged in the living room in front of the Christmas tree.

The big things are special, but I think my sweetest memories lie in the little things. Like our first Halloween. I was so excited at the prospect of trick-or-treaters, and we carved a bunch of little pumpkins in the images of dead rock stars- Jimi Hendrix, Jerry Garcia, Bob Marley, The Beatles. We’ve done some elaborate carvings since then, but those will always be my favorites.

And then there was the day that it unexpectedly snowed, and Matt and I walked through the swirling flakes with our yellow dog down a street that looked like a Victorian postcard. It was one of the most beautiful, magical moments I ever experienced.

I hosted my first Easter dinner in that tiny kitchen, and I was so proud to serve my sister and her friends on my brand new wedding china that had just started to arrive. We started our life in that house, and it will always be dear to me. So when I drove past it today, even though it was a different color and the yard had changed a bit,  it still looked like hope, love, and the eternal optimism of youth. 

Is There a Rehab Program for This??

            You know that story The Red Shoes about the ballerina that gets a pair of red slippers that make her dance beautifully, but she can’t stop dancing? Literally can’t stop at all and dances herself (spoiler alert) to her death? Well, I’ve had a similar situation over here, only it wasn’t toe shoes. Let’s call it The Red Glue Gun.

            I don’t know what it is about fall, if it’s cooler air, the kids going back to school, or the sheer abundance of holiday crafts and recipes that start appearing everywhere, but I start getting the urge to get crafty. This year it was especially bad. I think it has something to do with the fact that all the kids are in school all day and I actually have time to do stuff. And since the beginning of September, it has looked like Hobby Lobby exploded all over my house.

            First it was the dollhouse. I have always had a thing about dollhouses- really anything in miniature, and I’ve wanted a dollhouse for years. Attempting to build one from a kit proved beyond a doubt that that requires way more patience and precision than I will ever possess. So I turned to Ebay and bought an exact replica of the tin dollhouse I had as a child.

            It was great. I made some furniture, it was cool. But not as cool as it could be. So I set out to help it achieve ultimate dollhouse fabulousness. For an entire weekend I glued tiny wallpaper, sewed tiny pillows, mitered popsicle sticks to make window mouldings and chair rails, I even painted tiny pictures and made a tiny beaded chandelier. I think I remembered to feed the children somewhere in there, but who cares if I didn’t? My dollhouse looked fabulous! It lights up!!!

        I thought an entire (tiny) house makeover would quell the crafting urge. Nope. The Sahara-hot days of summer started to cool down, and I made the mistake of looking at Pinterest. Then I discovered burlap canvases at Walmart. Cue the deluge of pumpkin paper crafts, fall leaf paintings, and scarecrow embroidery. Surely that would do it, right?

            Ha ha ha, no fool, of course not! Because the second most crafty holiday in all the year is approaching. That’s right folks, Halloween. Second only to Christmas when it comes to glitter and glitz. And this year, I attempted to take on every craft project that I had filed away in my brain from last year. I painted a wall of Halloween silhouettes. While searching for a haunted house image to trace, I stumbled across awesome paper mache haunted houses people had made. Several hours and 15 pounds of glitter later, I had one of those. Painted wine bottles? Check. Chicken wire ghost? Obviously. I have become a weekly fixture at Hobby Lobby and the Dollar Tree. And walking into either of those establishments has started to cue a reaction similar to a drug addict. My pupils dilate, I start to breathe a little heavier, and my mind starts spinning at all the project possibilities.

           But I’m in recovery. Yesterday was October 1^st, and I put out all the Halloween creations that I had been furiously churning out. There are no longer a pile of paintbrushes drying by the sink, bottles of paint, glue and paper scraps littering the laundry counter, and I swept up the fine coating of glitter that covered everything. I’m pretty sure I have a hunchback, and I have severed all the nerves between my finger tips and fingernails trying to pry up all those little metal tabs that hold the backs of dollar store picture frames. But I’ll be okay. The glue gun burns, wire scratches, spray paint carpal tunnel and glitter lung will all heal- just in time for the flurry of Christmas crafts to begin…

Success, redefined

Did you miss me? Did you worry that I had fallen off a cliff and disappeared forever? Nah, I just got lazy. And I'm still trying to toe that fine line between writing my mind and respecting my kids' privacy. But for today, I'm saying screw those kids' right to internet anonymity. I've got something to say, and I'm shouting it from the top of the blogosphere!!! So, here you go, friends, my first (and, let's be honest, maybe last) post of the 2013/14 school year....

 Everyone is back in school, and I hope that all of the children are having great success in the classroom.  Personally, we’re having to define success a bit differently this year. We’ve always been able to judge Mason’s year by grades, test scores, percentiles in standardized testing- and we’ve always been pleased with what we saw. All the numbers reflected the bright, capable boy that we knew we had.  (The same cannot always be said for his homework!)

But once the twins started school, those numbers became useless to us. They painted pictures of children so terrifyingly behind that they had no chance of succeeding in school. Children that knew little to nothing. They showed kids that were struggling. They weren’t entirely wrong- our boys were struggling.  But the tests didn’t reflect what the boys actually knew, or how quickly they were learning, so we’ve had to start defining success in a different way for Will and Hays.

The boys are developmentally delayed and they have learning difficulties, this has been the case since preschool. Will’s ADHD makes it very hard for him to focus, and both have trouble completing assignments without a great deal of help. Independent work leaves them frustrated or wandering aimlessly around the room. Their weak fine motor skills make it difficult for them to do activities that involve cutting and writing. And kindergarten is not what it used to be. It’s no longer coloring, and dress-up centers, and learning colors and letters. Kids are expected to come in knowing all shapes, colors, letters, and numbers. An understanding of historical literature and quantum physics isn’t required, but is certainly encouraged. Okay, I’m kidding about the physics, but only a little.  Basically, school is hard and they’re behind.

And if we just focus on those things, kindergarten becomes one huge depressing glob of poor test scores, incomplete work, frustration, and fear for their future. So we’re not. We’re putting aside the tests for right now and we’re looking in front of us, and what we see is progress. It may be smaller and slower than the leaps and bounds other children are making, but it’s progress. They can identify almost all the letter sounds, read a few sight words, write their names (mostly) clearly, recognize numbers, count objects- all things that they could barely do three weeks ago. Tonight Hays bit his triangle of cheese quesadilla into a “k” shape and said, “Look, I made a K. It says kkkkk. Katie and Kangaroo start with K.” And let me tell you, folks, that is HUGE. They may not make a MAP test question for making quesadilla Ks, but if they did, my kid would be in the top percentile!! So we are celebrating these day-to-day accomplishments.  And we’re seeing them learn and understand more every day. How could that possibly be anything other than success?

The test scores may say otherwise. If you compare my kid’s work to some other kid’s work, it may not look like he’s doing amazing things. But if you put all that unimportant outside comparison away, and compare his paper today with his paper from three weeks ago, you will see something amazing and beautiful. They are growing and learning at lightning speed and it is awe-inspiring. I’m so very proud of them and grateful to the teachers and early-intervention teachers that are helping make this happen.

I’m growing and learning too. If you’d told me a few years ago that my children would need early intervention and special education services- that I’d be sitting in a meeting with both teachers, the assistant principal, the speech teacher and the school psychologist, I would have been horrified. And probably cried my eyes out. But now I see it as the blessing it truly is. We have a whole freakin’ team of dedicated professionals who will help my boys. All these wonderful people that will work their butts off to get my boys everything they need to continue to grow and learn and succeed.

My wounded mommy pride that was so quick to blame my parental shortcomings for any problem my boys have ever had, has lightened up a bit. This isn’t about me or anything I didn’t do. Plenty of smart, wonderful, involved parents have children with learning difficulties. This is not an indicator of bad parenting. In fact, the willingness to seek out every possible program or modification to help your child learn, is the sign of a very good parent. So I’m no longer beating myself up for missed flash card opportunities when they were toddlers, or crying over poor standardized test scores. I am focusing on the growth I see every single day, and how proud they are of every accomplishment, and I know that they are having a successful year. They’re in school to learn, and that’s exactly what they’re doing, and that’s good enough for me. 

Seeking Mommy Proxy

Where exactly on Craigslist would one place an ad for a mommy proxy? Because I need one to fill in for laundry, whining, bathing the dog, and dealing with school stuff. Honestly, I'll do the rest of it if I can just get someone else to deal with school because I am OVER IT.

Every October, as long as Mason has been in school, I have written some variation of this post. That's because every year, we have dealt with the same crap. He's smart, but not focused. He's capable, but not motivated. He's sweet, but too easily distracted. His test scores are great, but he's careless with his work. And on and on and on, and blah, blah, blah, and I am soooooooooo over it.

Not over it in the sense that we don't keep going through the motions. I'm still fully involved in the teacher conferences, emails, supervising homework, checking the agenda, setting goals, reward charts, consequence charts, lectures, motivational speeches, threats, begging- but only in the physical sense. Mentally, I'm yelling "Auuuuggghhhh, ENOUGH! Jesus, enough. We know he's smart. We know he gets it, and can do anything you put in front of him. He just doesn't give two shits about bar graphing how many chickens Farmer Brown has. And I don't either, so stop bugging us about it!!" But of course, we can't do that. We have to care about Farmer Brown and his freakin' chickens. Or at least, we have to make Mason think that we care, so that we can somehow make him care.

But I don't. Not about the minutiae of it all. I care a whole, whole lot about him actually learning the material. I want to know that he has a clear understanding of all the things they're trying to teach him. And I know that the teachers are trying to measure his learning and progress with all those stupid, boring worksheets. I get it. And because I get it, I ride his ass when he rushes through his work and makes sloppy mistakes. But I am so, so, so tired of riding it. Because if I can't muster up even a little bit of concern over the plight of Farmer Brown and his chickens, how can I expect him to?

And I'm just worn out with dealing with every infraction. He was dancing in class? Eh, yeah. He was talking in the hall? Meh. He was scaling the bathroom stall like Spiderman? Well, that's just kind of impressive....Before my teacher friends decide that they hate me, I know that it's all the little things that add up to a classroom full of chaos. I used to teach- I know you have to nip that crazy in the bud. But honestly, unless he's hurting someone, causing an outrageous distraction, or  selling drugs on the playground, I just can't get all that worked up about it. We're doling out consequences for it, but only because I can't figure out a way to ignore it without sending Mason the message that we don't care about his behavior at school. I mean we care, but come on- he's 8. And there's a certain amount of crazy that comes with being an 8 year old boy that no amount of lecturing or punishing is going to tame.

So I want a proxy to come and do all that crap for me. I want her to stand over Mason and make him go back and correct the mistakes in his homework 600 times. I want her to send out emails over and over to the teachers explaining that we are aware that Mason is not working up to his potential. I want her to go to the conference and explain that while we totally agree that Mason could be excelling, we can't force him to excel. And we are okay with him just meeting standards as long as he truly understands the material. I want her to lecture Mason 400 times about how he's so smart and capable, but his work isn't reflecting that. I want her to take away TV privileges because he danced in class, because I am tired of it.

I am tired of fighting with him and fussing at him. I'm tired of being mad at him, and I'm tired of him being mad at me. I just want to hang out, get along, and let someone else do the scut work. So, pretty please, tell me where to place that ad?

In Honor and Memory

For most of my life, I have had the pleasure of spending our summer beach vacation with my very large family, and our dear friends, the Williams family. Carol Williams is my mother's very best friend going all the way back to 7th grade. I have always thought that theirs was the perfect example of friendship. Decades and distance haven't diminished their ability to talk, reminisce, confide, and laugh until they are gasping for breath and tears are running down their faces. Carol is smart, funny, beautiful, and ridiculously fun to be around. Who wouldn't want to be her best friend for a lifetime?

The Williams children are as amazing as their mother. Sarah is stunningly gorgeous, sweet, and elegantly stylish. I think the word "lovely" was created to describe a girl like Sarah, because she is truly lovely in every way. And Spencer, oh lord, I barely even have words to describe how wonderful that boy is. I swear, if you could order a son from a catalogue, he's the one you'd pick out. He is not just smart, handsome and athletic, he is good and kind to his very core. If any of my boys turned out half as good as Spencer, I'd feel like I'd really done something.

The foundation of the Williams family is Rodney. And he is, quite simply, one of the best men I have ever known. The word that comes to mind when I think of Rodney is "solid." He just exuded wisdom and strength and it always seemed like he could answer any question and solve any problem. Like the rest of his family, he was smart, good-looking and funny, but the thing that stood out most about Rodney was the sense of, "This is a man you can count on."

Rodney fought the good fight against cancer for the last couple of years. Unfortunately, even the strongest and most solid of men can't always overcome that monster. And now we are mourning the loss of this good, good man and our hearts are breaking for this family that we love so much. We are also mourning a beloved tradition that has lasted nearly 20 years, because it will never be the same without Rodney.

Despite the sadness, I am so grateful to have known Rodney. He was such a shining example of everything that a good man, a good husband, and a good father should be, and I feel honored to have had him as a part of one of the most special, treasured parts of my life. He will be missed, but what a legacy he leaves in the beautiful family that he and Carol created.

Three of my favorite guys in my favorite place

Ma Ingalls Gets My Vote for Mother of the Century

I hope you all survived the summer and that you're rejoicing in the glorious return to school and the promise of cooler temperatures. Personally, I almost wept with joy when I saw the school bus lumbering up the road. Summer gets awfully long around here. It's really hot, the kids are bored, they're whining and fighting- it would be hard on the toughest of mothers. And I am not the toughest of mothers, but I can tell you who is. Caroline Ingalls.

Who is Caroline Ingalls? Duh, Ma Ingalls, mother of Laura Ingalls Wilder, and perhaps the most stoic woman to ever traverse the prairie in a covered wagon. I loved the Little House series when I was a kid (both book and tv, though I preferred the show. Michael Landon was dreamy...) I  reread Little House on the Prairie for the first time in probably 25 years, and I can tell that age and motherhood have changed my perspective on that book. I mean, sure, Laura's great and all, but the standout for me was Ma Ingalls.

Was there anything that woman couldn't do? In a few hundred pages she packed up her entire world, two little girls and a baby, and set off into the wilderness. She put her full faith in her husband, trusting his every decision from the route to take, to the place they settled. He said "this is it" in the middle of nothing but grass and she says, "Okay" and starts unloading the wagon. She keeps the kids clean, the food cooked, the clothes washed and ironed while they're still living out of a freakin' wagon. She helps build the house, fend off prairie fires and Indians, survives a bout of malaria and a near massacre, only to have to pack up and move on a year later because Pa built the ol' homestead three miles over the line in Indian country. Way to go, Pa.

And yet through all this, she never says anything crosser than, "Why won't you girls ever keep your sunbonnets on?" Seriously??? How is that possible? She never says to Charles, "What the hell is wrong with you?? We had a perfectly good house in the Big Woods, but you just had to drag us all out here to possibly be scalped because you could occasionally hear someone's ax?" Wolves surround the house. Indians wander into their house, demand that she cook food, and take their stuff. And not once does she yell at her husband "You idiot! Are you trying to get us killed?" How does she do it?

I like to think that a big part of it is the fact that it's written from a child's memories. That sweet, innocent Laura was so busy frolicking around chasing gophers that she didn't notice the too-bright, sharp edge of sarcasm in her mother's voice as she said, "Why sure, Charles. We'll just pack everything back into the ol' wagon and leave behind everything we almost killed ourselves to build, just because you weren't quite careful enough when it came to property lines. Oh no, I'm not mad. I'm positively thrilled to set out on a new adventure." Because if she was truly as stoic and good-natured as the book portrayed her, she was superhuman. Or drunk. Or had the hook-up to some awesome pioneer pharmaceuticals.

Or maybe she was just a much, MUCH better woman than I am. Because we're packing up our own covered wagon (minivan) and setting off on a 7 hour trip to Disney World in a few months, and I'm dreading that as much as I imagine a pioneer woman would dread a trip across the great plains. And we have air conditioning and a dvd player and a Nintendo DS and an Ipad. We literally have more screens than children, but I'd still almost rather be scalped.

So, Ma Ingalls, my hat is off to you. I'm not a quarter of the woman you were, and I don't really want to be. But I wouldn't mind a bottle or two of whatever magic elixir you were using to get you through the day. I bet that would make those miles to Orlando just fly by!