There aren’t too many moments where I get to be a total hero to my kids, especially as they’re getting older, and my heroic efforts are sometimes met with a roll of the eyes or a sigh that I can only interpret to be sarcastic.

But last night, I got to save the day (can you save the day at night, or did I save the night?).  Dave has been away on a business trip, so I’ve been parenting solo.  Sometime after midnight, Michael came up to my room, shaking, having been awoken by the beeping of a smoke detector with a low battery.  On a side note, why is it that 90 percent of the time, this does NOT happen in the middle of the afternoon, but shocks someone out of a deep sleep with that annoying sound??

Smoke detector (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Anyway, since our house was renovated relatively recently, we are up to code with our smoke detectors, which means there are several on every level of the house, and one in every bedroom.  I know that’s a good thing in the unlikely event of a fire, but it’s incredibly annoying in the much more likely event that I’m going to have to stumble around in my pajamas, trying to figure out where that infernal beeping is coming from because a battery is dying.  Michael, who was still shaken by being woken up, insisted on following me around the house, until I figured out (after just 3 beeps – yay, me!) that the battery needed to be changed in his room.  I’ve learned to keep the 9 volt batteries in an accessible kitchen drawer, found something to stand on so I could reach, and had the whole problem solved in less than 5 minutes.  Oh, and the other kid slept through the whole thing.

My victory was met with a sleepy “thank you,” and a tight hug from a pajama-clad 8-year-old.  Could there be anything better?

The majority of my triumphant parenting moments these days revolve around finding lost stuff.  A few weeks ago, I found an iPod that had been missing for several weeks.  It was left on a bookcase, under a piece of paper.  You would have thought that, based on the reaction, I’d found Michael Jordan or a big stack of cash under that piece of paper.  But I’ll take it.

Now, I do realize that if one of the smoke detectors on the higher ceiling in my bedroom needed a new battery, I’d kind of be screwed, but for now, I’m going to focus on my victory.

On the way to camp this morning, Matthew told me that he needs a white t-shirt for something his bunk is doing one day next week.  No problem, I cheerfully replied, because I always have a stash of plain white t-shirts in various sizes (purchased when they’re on sale at the craft store).

Now THIS is something that they don’t tell you in the parenting magazines.  Someone ought to publish a book with some more useful parenting tips than how to get a preschooler to eat more more than just pretzels and string cheese.  Here are a few pointers that I’ve had to figure out on my own over the years:

1. Your elementary schooler is going to come home with a request from his teacher for a shoebox, coffee can, plain white t-shirt, ziploc bag the size of a small SUV, or something more obscure like a goat heart.  And because this request has been sitting, crumpled in a damp ball in the bottom of your child’s backpack for several days, you will have approximately 12 hours to procure this item, label it nicely with your child’s name, and present it to the teacher.

2. At some point, your child is going to embarrass you with a tantrum or a swear word they learned from you.  Probably in a nice store or in front of your boss.  When it happens, here’s hoping you’re surrounded by people who have kids too, so they will pity, rather than judge you.

3. There’s always going to be some annoying mom somewhere, who has a kid who walks, talks, is potty trained, reads, lands a back handspring and does algebra before your kid.  Remember that every kid reaches milestones at their own pace.  And that this braggy mom just sucks.

4. It’s possible that your child is going to have some weird habit that perplexes you.  For a while, one of my kids insisted on stopping at every car in the supermarket parking lot so he could read me the license plate.  And for a solid two years, the other kid couldn’t fall asleep unless he brought some random item (which he referred to as his “sleeping things”) to bed with him.  We’d find him with an Uno card stuck to his sleeping face, his hand in a cardboard box, or his sweaty little preschooler fingers wrapped around a ladle when we’d kiss him goodnight.  The moral of the story: embrace the quirks, because if you don’t, you’ll question half of what they do.

Any more questions?