Kangatopia

I should update, and one day soon I probably will. I’m not great at holding to these kinds of commitments, but I do at least think about it.

So. When we left off, it was Halloween. Monkey was Dorothy, Winston – Little Red Riding Hood, and Bear – some kind of creepy skeleton thing. I took the girls to a festival, Bear trick or treated for pretty much the first time with his friends. After the festival, with the girls passed out in the back seat I went for a spin around the lake I ride my bike around. Very few lights illuminate the road, so it’s a little creepy. I kept hoping I would see the local ghost, but I guess it wasn’t my turn. I did make a wrong turn, and ended up in a secluded parking lot with a couple of cars which very much looked as if the occupants were getting stoned.

Halloween was followed by Thanksgiving – which was peaceful. We don’t have family drama any more.

Christmas came and went.

The four of us heart Obama, even my son whose opinions are based on those of his father.

Happy new year. Here’s hoping that it is going to be way less traumatic than last year.

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Winston! Thank you for not crying all the way to school and all through the drop off line and then have to be walked sobbing into school by the adult aid who oversees the morning chaos of stressed out parents and kids frantic to make it inside before the tardy bell rings. Yes, you forgot your yellow folder, and THANK YOU FOR NOT FREAKING OUT. Seriously, that kind of thing isn’t usually followed by a day filled with rainbows, lollipops and pretty snowflakes.

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Monkey, my darling Monkey – you have a seemingly unlimited supply of patience, and I thought it was pretty darn cute, and ingenious, of you this morning when you hid out in the laundry room to put on your boots so that Winston wouldn’t argue with you about who gets to wear them. Do you and Winston have an agreement that whoever puts them on first gets to keep them on? Or was this your way of heading her off at the pass, sort of like licking the bottom of a dinner roll so no one else will eat it?

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Bear Boo, I don’t think you know this about me yet, but when you ask me for help on your homework and I am trying to explain it to you only to result in you saying, ‘I’ll just ask my teacher tomorrow”, my competitive streak comes out and I think, ‘Oh No You Didn’t! I can explain this way better than your teacher!’ Whether that’s true or not is inconsequential. You’ll also find that I like using slang, but I have a thing about articulating – so that, ‘Oh No You Din’nt’ comes out sounding very dorky when I say it.

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Tomorrow is Halloween. Plans are made and set. I’m asking for a few hours off from work in the afternoon to minimize last minute costume preparations and frenzied scurrying and fast driving, and stressed out yelling. When that sun goes down tomorrow night, you three will be ready!

I love you,
Mommy

Dear Bear,

Last night at baseball practice, I could see that you really are getting more and more comfortable with the game. I am determined to take you to the batting cages this winter. I love watching you play. You get so excited, and are so happy when you are out on that field.

This morning we determined that if someone counted 1 year per second of the length of time the Earth has existed that one person could not complete this challenge within his or her lifetime. It was fun watching you do all that math in your head.

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Dear Monkey,

We still haven’t bought you a coat, so we are dressing you in layer upon layer every morning so that you won’t get too cold on the way to school. I’m sorry. I promise that we will find time to go to more places until we find a coat you wouldn’t mind being seen in. It’s to your credit that you are learning to be more discerning about what you wear.

You are also learning to read words faster and faster now, and it won’t be long before I can no longer spell words that I don’t want to say out loud in front of you. I think you are going to be a pretty damn clever teenager.

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Dear Turtle… ahem, Winston,

“Stop scratching, Rub!” Those words are probably going to reverberate through your dreams all of your life.

Did you know you are left handed? I swear I didn’t realize this until last week. You’ve also been reading words lately that I haven’t had to read to you first. It could be that your teacher goes over them in class, but last night you knew yellow, purple, green, red, blue. Your homework was to trace the letters of these words in crayon in the corresponding color. The only part I helped you do was hunt down a yellow crayon.

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Love,
Mama

Dear Monkey,

Every morning you wake up bright and early, and this morning – while you did sleep in (not one of you got up on the first try) – you didn’t lose your composure when we couldn’t find the sneakers that Winston had stashed in the toys. I am always proud of you, but I am frequently in awe of you too. You and I both were stumped as to what to do in case the shoes couldn’t be found. Thank you, Monkey, for not losing your shit the way Mommy would have.

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Dear Bear,

I really am sorry that this morning I called your large, over-sized binder “stupid” not once, but twice. I still don’t understand completely why you needed to take it with you to Reach today, but I do appreciate your desire to be prepared. In fact, I am really, really grateful and happy that you recognize the value in not getting caught unaware. That binder is, I realize, the central depository (besides your brain, that is) of your 5th grade education.

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Dear Winston,

My God, you are cute! But you are a Turtle. If it weren’t confusing, I would change your name from Winston to Turtle on this blog, or as Shep named you, Turteline. My guess is that you received a tardy this morning because of your slow, take it easy pace. Don’t misunderstand, I love this about you too. I hope you are always this capable of not succumbing to the pressures of schedules, urgency and time. Where Monkey doesn’t lose her shit the way Mommy does, you don’t rush around like a hamster on crack.

Last night, Turtle… ahem, Winston, I was soooooo proud of you for not getting upset, freaking out or crying when I wasn’t waiting to take you home from dance class. Thank you for sitting quietly until Grandpa got there. (He’s a slow mover too but he has the additional excuse of a bum knee. See! Besides your quintessential “M…l” look, you also inherited Grandpa’s inability to be on time for anything.) You probably won’t realize this until you’re older, but your mommy has a rotten sense of direction. I was talking to some of the other moms outside of dance class and they told me where I could go to buy some tape like stuff to hem up the bottom of your little red riding hood cape so that you don’t trip over it and hurt yourself the way your Mommy, or Auntie Lisa, would when confronted with a similar challenge. You are graceful. We are not. Anyway, after getting directions, Bear, Monkey and I drove 10 minutes away, bought the hemming up stuff plus some ribbons to wear in your hair, and Monkey’s hair, to match your costumes on Halloween. I made some silly jokes to the sales lady in the store about not having any brain power for sewing or auto mechanics, and she didn’t look amused. Or maybe she was mildly amused. I’m sure I looked like a big dork. Then, Monkey, Bear and I got back in the car wherein Bear made lots of potty humor style jokes that kept Monkey in stitches while I got us very, very lost. I was about halfway, or maybe two thirds of the way, out to where your great-grandparents used to live in the countryside east of where we live now. Way out east. I don’t actually know how to get to that house on my own, but I do know sort of kind of where it is and that was exactly where we did NOT want to be last night. Thank GOD Grandpa answered the phone (a rarity – a really annoying, frustrating rarity) when I made the extremely panicked call that we were lost in Australia (as Bear asserted), and only a miracle would get us back to you on time. Needless to say, that miracle didn’t happen for us last night but when I finally figured out that I had driven several miles east and north, instead of west and south, we picked you up from Grandpa’s house only 20 minutes after your dance class ended. Your mommy drives fast in times of panic. Actually, your mommy drives fast most of the time which is why she currently has a speeding ticket in deferred adjudication.

Bear, Monkey, Winston – I Love You with all my heart.

Signed,
Mommy

The girls and I started reading Eloise last night. Have you read this book? I just wish we had cracked it open sooner. It is pretty gosh-darned hilarious. I haven’t been consistently reading to the kids every night, so we’ve worked 15 minutes minimum into our routine for story time. Last night Bear opted to read in his room, but I think tonight over dinner we are going to discuss books that we would all enjoy… maybe Harry Potter? Bear surprises me in that he loves to read books about World War II. He hasn’t been so enamored lately of novels. I’ve talked to him about the HP books before but he seemed only mildly interested – interested in the way a child is who is trying to make a parent happy, but could take or leave it.

Monkey turned 7 a month ago, and we still haven’t gotten around to having her birthday party. I’m feeling kind of guilty about that, but she hasn’t mentioned it. What she doesn’t realize is that not complaining about not having the party she was promised is exactly why one hasn’t been organized. Her lack of complaints is also one of the things I love so much about her. A friend suggested that I organize a surprise party for her, and that sounds like a great idea – so now I just have to figure out some options. One of the primary reasons why the birthday party hasn’t happened has a lot to do with indecision on the best location.

Halloween is fast approaching and not one of the kids has a costume sorted out, and I’m kind of hopeful I get it together to do Halloween type activities with them before it’s next Halloween. I love Halloween. Unlike Easter, it is not a chore at all. The girls have chosen more traditional, less Disney inspired, costumes this year. Monkey wants to be Dorothy (and you know, she is going to look pretty damn cute with pigtails tied up in blue grosgrain ribbon – that is, if we can put the costume together), and Winston has a hankering for Little Red Riding Hood. I think they both are looking forward to carrying a basket. Bear wants to be something scary, dark and threatening – I get the impression from watching him and his friends discuss this topic that this is a pretty standard boy thing. Long gone are the days when he wanted to be Winnie the Pooh for Halloween, or a Power Ranger.

Let’s see… what else? Bear and Monkey brought home their report cards last week, and Bear received all As with a low A in math. Monkey, who has been practicing her addition and subtraction skills at home almost non-stop, received what I think is a B (the grading system is different for her than my son) in math, and an A in everything else. Winston has been recommended for tutoring. However, she is the youngest in her class and I’ve decided to not let this keep me up at night.

I haven’t been reading anything more respectable than bestselling vampire novels. I think I need to do something to keep myself from treading water too long in the shallow end of the pool, but that would require the ability and time to care about how my brain needs a few more synapses to make a few more connections. I am weaning myself off of diet soda and onto green tea. I’m also carrying around vitamins in my car so that I remember to take them on the way to work. I discovered much to my dismay late last week that I am gaining weight. I haven’t had as much time to ride my bike, and I’ve been a little really lax on my diet. I woke up this morning with a decision to pull of that together, and stop messing around – as my sister once put it, ‘I have given myself a talking to’. My 20 year high school reunion is looming in the ever lessening distance. I am already friends with a significant portion of the people I can remember from my graduating class on Facebook, and it’s occurred to me that all this self-criticism is directly related to how happy and successful all of my classmates appear. I guess all change sticks better if it happens incrementally and slowly.

Now! On to pictures!

Winston kicking back at breakfast before her big milestone day:

This is Winston walking out of school on her very first day as a Kindergartener:

Yes, I did dress them up in twin outfits that look a little like school uniforms:

My three fledglings. Bear is a sage 5th grader, Monkey a wacky 1st grader and of course, sweet pea Winston on the day she stepped out of the nursery, though in truth this is an ongoing process:

My beautiful (inside), beautiful (and out) Monkey [I think all my kids are amazingly wonderful - as I would as their mother, but I love this picture of Monkey]:

The ways in which I behave, react, think and feel have been in flux. I haven’t felt ready to write anything, even an email – unless it was for work and didn’t require any personality. I’ve found that the only conversations I’ve been able to hold are ones that don’t include small talk. I’ve realized that I tend to avoid places and situations where a little meaningless banter is expected and normal. I suck at not sprinkling a liberal amount of personal information into conversations with people I’ve just met. It’s the same with this blog. I’ve been told again and again that this blog is too personal, and the people around me have asked why I would publish some of the things I write about. I’ve always felt that being authentic was better than glossing over or avoiding the things I think about. However, now I tend to agree more and more that I would rather not talk about the truly intimate details of my life, and instead write about the things and people that make me happy, particularly my family.

I do not think of myself as a great mom and I tend to hold myself up for comparison to other mothers who I think of as being fabulous at the art of parenthood. The funny thing is that these are women I’ve never met, and probably never will meet. They are the ones that blog about their children, and the accomplishments of their family. They don’t write about the fight they’ve had with their husband, or the trauma of divorce and life afterwards. They write about the things and people in their lives who make them happy. The mothers I know personally are going through many of the same parenting/ time/ financial struggles as me, except that I don’t happen to know or am friends with anyone who is in a situation similar to mine. This can sometimes feel isolating, and sometimes I feel envious – but I always, always, and always feel fortunate to have, and provide, the life we enjoy. We’re not rich. I strictly budget our time and finances. There are some aspects of our lives that need to be changed. Yet, I would repeat all the mistakes and missteps of my life if it were the only way to have these three amazing people around me.

That said, we are all about to embark on what is going to be a really sucky morning. Bear’s friend invited him and his sisters to a birthday party this morning that sounds like a whole lot of fun. It’s to be located at a park the kids love to visit. There will be games, running, playing, birthday kid food. It will be a prime opportunity for Bear to spend some time with his friends. In fact, this would have been a great day, a perfect day even, since afterwards Bear is playing in a baseball game with these same friends… if only Bear hadn’t violated the rules and thus will be made to sit this party out. This is going to be hard for him and me – and the girls for that matter since they won’t be able to go either. I don’t remember the last time I’ve denied this kind of opportunity to one of the kids because of bad behavior. He still gets to play in the baseball game because otherwise (even though he’s a right fielder – he’s brand new to baseball!) the team would be short-handed, and not letting the team down is something else Bear should internalize.

A couple of months ago my camera fell a foot from a child’s hands and landed on its lens. Sadly, the camera didn’t make it and a proper Craigs List style burial is in the works. A few days ago I ratcheted up my credit debt with a shiny new entry level digital slr. It’s pretty exciting, and will be even more so once I get around to taking it out of its box. I haven’t used a slr since a photography class in high school. Learning how to take beautiful pictures is going to become my new hobby – one I would bet is way more productive than watching tv or bemoaning the current state of my personal life (a subject now under wraps on this blog but how could I resist throwing out a few bits here and there?)

In the next installment of this blog I will post pictures of Winston’s first day of Kindergarten, I promise.

At some point I am going to update, I promise. Part of the problem is tv. I have digital cable after not having it for a long time which means that I’ve gotten hooked on tv shows, specifically MVP and Swingtown. I know, I know. There is no lofty intellectualism in either one, but that’s not why I watch tv and people who do watch tv for primarily that reason are probably suspect.

There are things I would like to document if – after the kids go to bed, I can tear myself away from incessant internet surfing and tv watching. For example…

A friend and I took the girls to Six Flags a couple of weeks ago. (Bear went with his dad on a different day.) It was Winston’s first visit, and Monkey’s third. Winston did not display the same fearlessness as her sister.

Bear has been spending the majority of his summer with his grandfather and father. Tragically, mandated bedtimes are going back into effect on Sunday, so his late night hours on Club Penguin are about to come to an end.

I’ve just gotten back from a week in California with my sister. The kids stayed with their dad, and after I stopped feeling guilty – it was a damn nice vacation.

Winston’s 5th birthday is in two days, Saturday. She was born on a Saturday. Five years ago tomorrow morning I was getting ready for a baby shower being given to me at work, not imagining that 24 hours later I would be holding my newborn daughter (who was three weeks early).

Monkey stayed home with her grandfather and father yesterday after she was sent home from daycare with a nasty cough. Her dad took her to the doctor, and she came away with an inhaler to open up her bronchial tubes. This scared me, so I called the doctor and was assured that it’s only asthma if it’s chronic. Fortunately, this does not seem to be a chronic condition. When I walked in the door of my father’s house yesterday evening to take her home, she was sitting in a chair by the door. Tears were streaming down her face, and you could hear her cries outside. She said that she was crying because she missed me, then she more or less attached herself to me for the rest of the night. I negotiated with her to allow me enough time without holding her to do things such as make her soup for dinner. It’s moments like this that serve to remind me of the enormous, though wonderful, responsibilities of parenting, and the awesome amount of love.

The girls and I are having a nice, relaxed evening at home. Their friend came over to play, and now that the friend has gone home, we are picking up toys, washing dishes and finally, sprawling on the couch to watch a travel show about Greece. When we first switch it on, a cute blond girl is sitting in a boat near the shore of the Aegean Sea with something kind of slimy in her hand. We then see that somehow she has fished an octopus out of the water, and La, La, La, she is so happy because this living, pulsating thing has affixed its suction cups to her arms. The camera transitions from the octopus slowly slithering across the bottom of the boat to the girl, who is now sitting next to a fire on the shore with what looks like, Oh My God!, an octopus arm in her hand. Is that? Oh, Jesus, it is. She’s EATING the octopus. And not just eating it, she’s ripping it apart. La, La, La, she sings, I’m eating an octopus. Yum, salty.

And it doesn’t stop there.

Next we see her, she’s walking down a street at night, and she pops into a restaurant for a dinner to follow up her late afternoon snack. Into the kitchen she goes where the chef tactfully ignores her, and she picks up a fried lump of Octopus off a plate, probably belonging to the camera man who is wishing she would sit her ass down in the dining room at a table with everybody else, squeezes a little lemon on it, takes a quick bite and sets it back down on the plate before she pops into yet another restaurant to another 10 second dinner of Octopus. She proclaims it as healthy eating. It is? Really? It looks kind of fatty from here and washing it in sea water to give it extra flavor seems kind of counter-intuitive. Even Monkey is questioning the wisdom. Mommy, is octopus healthy? Well, I guess so, honey, if this cute, blond barbarian says it is. The poor octopus. Swimming along, singing La, La, La, and zoink! out of the ocean onto the grill or into the fire or God help us, made into an ice cream treat? All so this happy go lucky girl can prove to a grossed out PBS audience that she can adapt to any culture and be really Goddamned happy about it. I’m not sure what pulls me into this show more: the trippy exhibition of the octopus as food; the exaggerated appreciation of culture; or her glib cheerfulness, and the rate at which my disgust is escalating.

God, I feel like such a bitch.