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This is the world we live in.

Caution Tape

Caution Tape (Photo credit: Picture Perfect Pose)

For the past three summers (this will be the fourth), I have worked at the camp that my kids attend.  It’s a great fit for us – I love the job I have and the people I work with, and my boys have a fabulous eight weeks there every year.

As a camp staff member, I attend required staff training sessions every year.  At the end of today’s training session, we had several camp-wide drills, before which the camp director spoke frankly to the staff about the harsh reality that we all live in.

And it hit me.  Hard.

Not because I didn’t already know this.  I follow the news.  I read the information that comes home from my kids’ schools, and I know that safety is something to be taken seriously.  But there was something about looking around and seeing the faces of the counselors who take this job just because they love kids, thinking about my own kids being there, and then thinking of the terrifying possibility that something unthinkable could happen.

I find it so sad that kids’ (including my own kids) reality these days includes lockdown drills and intruder drills.  I know it’s necessary, and somehow it’s both scary and comforting at the same time to know that places our kids go are preparing for this.

It also makes yearn for the days of previous generations, when parents put their kids on a camp bus every morning, or sent them off to a sleepaway camp for the summer, thinking that the worst that could happen would be an argument with a friend or a bee sting.

I think every generation of kids has had their crises, their issues and things to fear.  All we can do is hug our kids tight, love them with everything we have, and just talk to them when they have questions, because unfortunately, we don’t have the answers either.

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Um, yeah. I told you.

Over the winter, we got an e-mail notifying us that it was time to sign up our 8-year-old son Michael for “pre-travel” soccer, a required program should he want to participate in travel soccer in our town in 3rd grade.

We asked Michael if he wanted to participate. Nope. Told him that all of his friends were doing it. Still no. Explained to him that if he decided later that he wanted to try out for travel for the fall and didn’t do this program, that it would be too late. No again. Reiterated that if he changed his mind halfway through the spring and wanted to join his friends, that he couldn’t change his mind. No, no, no.

So we signed him up.

In our defense, he’s 8 years old, and 8-year-olds can be pretty fickle characters. We really didn’t want to chance that he’d change his mind, because there would be nothing we could do about it.

And what happened? He almost always gave me a hard time about going, To our credit, when he did go, he enjoyed it, but when he wasn’t there, he told us he didn’t like it. I don’t think he enjoyed the serious level of competition (there were more than 100 boys there, being trained and evaluated by international soccer players for about 50 slots on the town’s travel teams). He said that he just wanted to play soccer, and this was, understandably, lots of drills. By the end, when Michael was justifiably arguing that HE never wanted to do this program, and that WE signed him up for it, we let him skip a bunch off the twice-weekly sessions.

soccer

We found out last night that, no surprise, Michael didn’t make any of the travel teams. All of his good friends who participated did. And while Michael seemed happy for his friends who got onto a team they really wanted to be on, he was incredibly happy for himself that he didn’t make it.

I guess sometimes kids really DO know what they want, and we have to figure out when we know better than they do, and when we should just shut up and listen.

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Happy Father’s Day…..

….. to all the wonderful dads out there.

To the dads who, like my husband Dave, work long hours at a job, then come home and play basketball (still wearing a tie) with the boys who want nothing more than to play with their dad, even if it’s  just for a few minutes.

To the dads of little girls, who let their daughters paint their toenails pink.

To the single dads, who leave a 20 dollar bill under a pillow in exchange for a tooth, because they just don’t have anything smaller.

To the stay-at-home dads, who change diapers, supervise homework, and nurture kids as well as any mom out there.

To the dads who don’t live with their kids, but still find a way to stay engaged with them.

To the single moms, who seek out the wonderful men in their lives to love their children, and step up themselves, because there just isn’t a dad.

To the dads, like my own, who can still make their adult children laugh by making a funny face.

To the dads who teach their kids to play a  sport, to fish, or to play guitar, just because they want to share something they love with someone they love.

To the dads who have been thrown up on, had a runny nose wiped on their shirt, or have had a diaper seemingly explode in the back seat of a new car.

To the dads who play endless games of Candyland, Chutes & Ladders, and Monopoly, when all they want to do is sit and read the newspaper.

To the dads who pretend to eat play-doh hamburgers and sip tea out of tiny plastic teacups.

To the dads who say “I love you” to teenagers being dropped off at school, because they know that when these kids are just a little bit older, they’ll say it back again.

Happy Father’s Day, from the moms, kids and everyone who loves you.

Dave and boys

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Please, just stop.

Warning.  Rant ahead.

But before I begin, let me say that I’m not without my complaints.  I have a bad day now and then, my kids sometimes drive me crazy, and I get pretty irritated when someone in front of me is driving 15 miles below the speed limit.

That said, I am generally able to put things into perspective, and with each year I grow older (and somehow, miraculously, more patient with myself and others), I’m more appalled by the people I see who are unable to understand that there are lots of minor (and yes, sometimes major) annoyances in life.  But they are just that.  Annoyances.  And it’s really important for us to remember to keep these things in perspective.  And really, I do understand that crappy things happen to all of us.

But…. a bad haircut is temporary.  If your kid is assigned to a class without her best friend, she’ll adjust.  And so will you.  The construction to update your kitchen is running behind?  As they say, it’s a first world problem, my friend …. consider yourself lucky that you have the means to update your kitchen.  Or that you even HAVE a kitchen.

I think it’s even more important to teach these lessons to our kids.  When Matthew was in 4th grade, he woke up one morning, realized he’d forgotten about a science test he had that day, and said, “I forgot to study!  I’m going to get an F! My life is ruined!!”  Sure, failing a science test because you forgot to study kind of sucks.  But more than anything, I wanted Matthew to understand that even if he did fail, it’s unlikely that this would be the most difficult hurdle he’d face in life (much as I wish that were the case).  Incidentally, it turned out that the test was actually the next day, and while I think Matthew did fine, ironically, I don’t remember that part of this story.

So the next time you have something to complain about (to me, anyway), ask yourself if this is really something that’s a problem.  Or just a minor inconvenience in your otherwise pretty wonderful life.

Stop Sign

Stop Sign (Photo credit: ladybeames)

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HOW late is it??!

I like to think I’m fun to be around.  But really only until about 9:00 p.m.

Tonight, we went out to dinner with some new friends – a few families with their kids.  We finished at the restaurant around 8:00, and everyone else went back to one house so the kids could play and the adults could hang out.  We, on the other hand, came home so we could get a tired 8-year-old to bed at a reasonable time, to do our best to not start off the weekend with a sleep deficit.

sleeping

This is really nothing new for me, or my family.  In college, I was one of the few people I knew who could actually manage an 8:00 a.m. class (mostly because by 11:00, I’d be knocking on my neighbor’s dorm room door, asking her to turn down her music).  Back then, on most Sunday mornings, no matter how late I’d been out on Saturday, I’d be up by 9:00, doing laundry and hoping that someone else would wake up so I’d have somebody to accompany me to the dining hall for brunch before I crumpled in a heap on the laundry room floor.

With a few late-night exceptions, my life has continued along happily this way.  I was able to find myself a great guy who also doesn’t love late nights (When we celebrated our 15th anniversary last year, a friend chalked the success of our marriage up to the fact that we are both often asleep by 10:00).  And I guess some of this is genetic, because our kids are just like us.  When Matthew was a baby, we tried our best to keep him on what I think now was a pretty complicated sleep schedule, because if we veered off course by more than about 30 minutes in either direction, it could get ugly.  Switching the clocks for daylight savings time was a nightmare.  Both kids have gotten a lot more flexible as they’ve gotten older, but usually, we all would still would rather go to bed early.

As I’ve grown into adulthood, I’ve realized that I just came this way, and that’s okay with me; I consider it part of my charm.  I can take the jokes from friends and have learned to laugh at myself.  But please don’t call me after 9.

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Left on!

I was just sent an e-mail with information about a study that says lefties are more accident prone, more musical, and better at math.

I found this interesting for a couple of reasons.

I’m a righty, and so is my husband.  But our older son Matthew is a lefty, and our younger son Michael is sort of half-lefty (he does fine motor tasks like writing and eating with his left hand, but plays sports righty).  So, the first thing I realized when I read this was that Matthew fits the profile perfectly – he can do more advanced math than I can handle, but occasionally trips over his own big, flat feet.  He loves music, sings, and plays the saxophone.MattandMike

Then, the other thing I thought about was as parents, how many of us tend to “profile” our kids.  We chalk certain behavior up to gender, birth order, and even things like hair color, name, and handedness.  And these things can start early.  The day after our son Michael was born, a nurse told me that “of course” he was colicky and screaming his head off, and then she said, “it’s your own fault – you named him Michael.”  Before that conversation, I had no idea of the “legend” of the name Michael, but I’ve since met a number of people who have confirmed that boys named Michael are more prone to mischief (and I’ve met some parents of Michaels have gone so far to call their sons’ behavior “evil.”  We have some bad days, but I wouldn’t go that far with mine).

To some degree, I think this helps us explain behavior into neat little piles.  And it gives us a conversation point with other parents – “Wow! You have a clumsy lefty and an evil Michael too?!”  But sometimes not everything makes sense, and we’re not at all sure where to put it – I mean, Matthew has a really good memory … is that because he’s a lefty, a first-born, a redhead, or a boy?  I just can’t figure it out.

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When are we overstepping the bounds?

Get Milk-Bone Happy

Get Milk-Bone Happy (Photo credit: Brett L.)

Just yesterday a man I see now and then when we walk our dogs gave my dog a treat without asking me first.  Now it’s not like I’m monitoring my dog’s diet, or that it’s a big deal that he gave her a treat, but for some reason, it really bugged me.  Just because he didn’t ask me first.  And unfortunately, the dog didn’t say, “Hold on. Can you please ask my mom if it’s okay for me to eat this mystery treat?”

But what I started wondering is – how do WE know when we’re crossing someone else’s invisible line, where we are doing something that for whatever reason bothers them?

Like when we tell a friend’s child that “no, in our house we don’t jump on the furniture while wearing muddy cleats,” or “please get your dirty hands out of the snacks, because it’s 5:00, you’re getting picked up in a minute, and your parents said you’re going out to dinner.”

Okay, so perhaps those are more straightforward scenarios, but I’m often unsure about how to handle things on the rare occasion that a kid who isn’t my own is being rude, or using words that I don’t think a kid should be using (earlier this year, I overheard an 8-year-old – not my own – refer to someone as a ‘bag of *insert non-8-year-old expletive here*’ ).

More often than not, rather than worry about disciplining the other kid (or, in a rare case, dog), I use these situations to teach my own kids (or, in a rare case, my own dog) about the good and bad things we see in the behavior of others, and what we expect in our own family.

Like not to take dog treats from strangers.

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You should really do this yourself.

I had one of those conversations with my kids this evening that makes me question what kind of job I’m doing as a mom.

I’ll be honest.  I don’t have those moments every day.  Generally, I think that we are doing a pretty good job of raising good, polite, responsible kids.  Tonight, though, the boys conspired to head downstairs just as I was putting the finishing touches on dinner.  I asked them to come back, and when they looked confused by my request, I told them that “I’m not a waitress, and it’s not my job to serve you.”  One actually replied, “But it is.  You’re the mom.”

I’m embarrassed to even admit that this conversation went down in my house.  And it makes me think that we need to do a better job of teaching our kids to take care of themselves.  I’m also hesitant to admit that on some level, not only do I not mind taking of care of my kids, but I actually kind of like it.  There is something that makes me feel wonderfully “mommy-like” by cooking dinner, making school lunches, baking banana bread (with bananas that I have, un-mommy-like, allowed to rot on the counter), and folding little miniature boxer briefs.

But I know there’s a really fine line here, and I fear that I’ve firmly planted myself on the wrong side of it.  My 8-year-old can’t reach where we keep the milk in the fridge, so I pour it for him.  My 11-year-old, on the other hand, is a handful of inches shorter than me, and can certainly reach it.  But he’s convinced he’ll spill it everywhere (which, incidentally, he most likely will), so he almost always asks me to pour it for him.  I’m sure this is a life skill I should be teaching him, and I wonder how his adult life will turn out if he can’t pour his own milk.

Maybe tomorrow morning, I’ll let him do it himself.  Then again, I just went food shopping today, and I’m not entirely certain that I want a whole gallon of milk on the floor.

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When did this happen?

I just went to take out the garbage, and just put on the the shoes closest to the front door – my not quite 12-year-old son Matthew’s flip flops.  And they were too big.

Sometimes this is the kind of thing it takes to remind me that the role I cherish so much – as “mommy” to my two boys, is short-lived.  I recently realized that once Matthew turns 12 late this summer, we will be 2/3 of the way finished with the 18 years will will have with him before he goes off to college.

And while I love watching him grow up, and love even more every day the person he is becoming, I’m sad to think that sooner rather than later, he’ll be the completely grown up version of who he is today.

I remember lying with Matthew in his bed when he was about 2, reading him a book, looking at his sweet face and hearing his little lispy voice, and wishing I could freeze that moment in time.  And maybe, just a little bit, I did just that.

Somehow, remarkably, I am able to remember almost every day that annoying behavior is temporary, spills and messes can be cleaned up, and what we’re left with is this unbelievably pure, to-the-soul love that has completed who I am.

Love you so much, Matthew.

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