Stuff someone should have told me a long time ago - part one

1. Make your own laundry and dishwasher detergent.
2. I didn't need calculus, but more classes in languages, negotiation, and standing up for yourself without getting fired would have come in handy.
3. A year long family membership at the zoo costs about the same as an action figure or doll for each kid but won't break as easily.
4. Step away from the book store.  That's what the library is for.
5. If you still have cable like I do, call the company every three months.  They will give you some kind of discount if you ask sweetly.
6. Baking soda and vinegar can fix a lot of problems.
7. Pets are more work than kids.
8. It took four kids to get one who needed or wanted it, but now I truly appreciate the pacifier.  She can keep it until high school as far as I'm concerned.
9.  Pack your lunch.  It makes the occasional lunch out seem like a big treat.
10.  I spend more and waste time when I try to save money using coupons.  Just go to the discount grocery store.  It's all the same underneath the packaging.

Fundraising

This one is late because 1) I'm as guilty as everyone else for shamelessly plugging various fundraisers, and 2) I'll probably generate a lot of ill will for slamming my school.

Over the years I have sold cookie dough, magazine subscriptions, raffle tickets, wrapping paper.  Just this week I used social media, word of mouth, handouts, and begging to get people to eat at Buffalo Wild Wings, which generously donated 10% of their proceeds from the day (not just based on the sales of the people who brought the ticket, but for all their tables!) to support Dodge's fundraiser for ALS.  I've also tried to support other people's fundraisers as much as possible - Girl Scout cookies, restaurant discount cards, Rangers ticket deals, car washes.  It's a game we all play - you support my kid, I'll support yours.

I don't mind any of this kind of activity.  If I don't need wrapping paper, I don't buy it, and I don't feel guilty about it.  If you don't like wings, I don't begrudge you for eating at home.  However, I do find the following scenario annoying, to the point that it made me envious of my homeschooling friends who probably don't have to deal with this kind of convoluted extortion.

For Field Day, which for some odd reason is always held on a muggy day in May instead of a pleasant March day when the weather in Dallas is near perfect, we had to bring plain white Ts for each kid to be tie-dyed.  Had I been smart, I would have found classmates roughly the same size as my kids and pooled money to buy the multipacks of undershirts, but instead I am now the proud owner of one pink shirt (Dodge), one purple shirt (Hank), one blue shirt (Corda), and 9 extra white shirts.

The kids are going to be exercising really hard in the humidity, so they are going to need lots of ice and coolers and water bottles and towels and sunblock and hats.  Should I forget this, I have been given 4 notes, 3 emails, and a 1 robocall.

However, Field Day is not really about exercise or three-legged races or a freebie day at the end of the school year.  No, it is a fundraiser for the PE department.  So, each grade has been assigned snacks to donate to the school, and those snacks will then be SOLD BACK to my kids when they get hungry, and the proceeds go to the PE department.  Yes Mom, you will be paying twice for those Cutie oranges and vegan granola bars.  My kids are well aware that Field Day is an opportunity to eat all day, and they are asking for money for tomorrow's festivities.  On the way to school Dodge asked me to please go to the bank today and get singles as an advance on his allowance so that he can buy snacks (ummm....did you clean the bathroom or do dish duty or put away your laundry or practice your instrument this week?).

I know I have no grounds for complaint because I chose not to be on the committees that make these decisions.  That's fine, and I'll probably even dig up a few dollars so the kids can get their snow cones.  However, in the future, let's simplify.  Let's just say that if the PE department needs $1000 for X, Y, and Z, then let's collect donations or get Sports Authority to sponsor us.  Let's keep the fun days and the fundraisers separate.

Pennies

There's really nothing better than a penny to a kid, right?  I used to collect pennies when I was little.  I had a book where I could store one from each year.  I also loved to save enough to be able to wrap them in the 50 penny rolls and trade them in at the bank for "bigger" money.  Just the right size for a small hand, a different color than the other coins, feeling rich if you have a whole bunch.

As we drove home tonight, Corda was admiring a penny.  She asked me many questions about where it came from, how many it would take to buy an airplane ticket to visit Grandma, and so on.  The conversation meandered to other topics.  Then I hear choking from the back row.  Oh yeah, the same girl who was calculating compound interest for her piggy bank just could not resist that shiny coin and decided to see what would happen if she tried to swallow it.  Fortunately it flew out and it was just a brief scare for both of us.  "Mom, can I get unbuckled?  My penny is on the floor!!"

Dragons

It's still Wednesday somewhere, right?  Maybe on that second earth they found earlier this week?  I won't bore you with the details of caring for a toddler who has been sick this week (lesson: might as well stick it out at CareNow for the 3.5 hour wait when the ear infection is first suspected or else your kid with a high tolerance for pain will go undiagnosed but cranky for a week).  Instead, my Wednesday Words for the week are to slow down and do something one on one with your kid every once in a while.  Hank really wanted to show me a YouTube video about dragons.  I figured it was a 4 minute Pokemon dragon something.  Oh no.  One hour and thirty-six minutes of quasi-documentary/infotainment that he saw once, memorized as gospel, and now needs to preach to the world.  It is a rare thing to have this almost eight year old beg to sit in my lap and watch something, so we did.  When I visited his school today, I saw that he used dragons as the topic for his weekly writing exercise too.  As I type, he's wearing his Spiderman costume and doing the play-by-play of a dragon battle that only he can see.  An hour and a half well spent to see inside that little guy's world.

You can't unsee that....

Since moving to Texas in the spring of 2004, I have always looked forward to the arrival of the bluebonnets.  It's my favorite color.  Ordinary medians suddenly become things of beauty during my daily commute.  The weather is neither too hot or too cold.  I have a couple of favorite fields where we go each year and let the kids run around, and I attempt to get at least one good shot of all of them looking at the camera at the same time.  I stalk the weather reports and figure out the best day in a three week window when it will not be too sunny, windy, or muddy.

All of that is ruined now, because I came across the tumblr site pooping on bluebonnets.  Thanks, internet, for permanently etching that phrase in my brain.

Thanks for the help, I think.

As a parent, when do you want help and when do you find it an intrusion?

On Sunday I took a load of CDs, a baby, and a five year old to Half Price Books.  It was raining.  I had the baby in the stroller, the five year old trying to push it, and a crate of CDs in my arms.  There was a man standing outside the door who made no attempt to open it for us.  I did a one-legged flamingo move to balance the crate, pull open the door, and get the stroller and girls inside.  He looked at us but did not help.  I was a little peeved that it did not occur to him to open the door (I would not have expected or wanted him to carry the crate).

The day before....we're at a baseball game and the baby crawled under the bleachers and found someone's trash to nosh on.  I took the trash from her mouth and walked it over to the trash can maybe 10 yards away.  She screamed.  Other mothers took pity on this poor, dirty child abandoned under the bleachers and they tried to console her.  When I got back I was a little peeved that people were touching my kid and in their actions indirectly saying that I was not doing a very good job at keeping my kid content and safe since she was crying and I was not with her.

So who is the hypocrite?  Me for being annoyed at both situations?  Probably.  Do I want help or not?  Is it fair to want help only on your own terms?  How do you decide when and how to help others?

Friday, March 28, 2014

I get a lot of "How many kids do you have?!?  And you work?  How do you do it?"  Well folks, I think I do it the same as anyone who has one kid or elderly parents or three jobs, or four dogs, but you can judge for yourself based on a typical day in the life....

6 am – Alarm goes off and New School on 105.3 The Fan is covering college basketball.  Ugh.  Boring.  Snooze.

6:34 am – Last possible moment to wake up and get out by 7.  Contacts in, pajamas that double as gym clothes still on.  Wake up kids who haven’t been playing Minecraft since 5 am.

7 am – Impressed that the boys got the trash out with one reminder and Corda remembered her shoes (we have issues with that).

7:37 am – Drop off Mac.  “Forget” to take the pacifier out of her mouth at day care.  Will probably either be lectured about that later or the pacifier will somehow disappear.

7:45 am – Drop off bigger kids.  Make 8 point turn to get out of the teacher parking lot because I long ago gave up the fight against the parents who park in the circular drive.

8:10 am – Park in garage near gym door so that I don’t have to walk through the office lobby in pajamas.

8:11 am – Make several trips between 5^th floor gym and 15^th floor property management office because my badge won’t open the gym and the various reprogramming efforts and replacement badges are not working either.  I guess this is my workout.  Pushing elevator buttons and keeping calm with property management counts, right?  Not sure how many partners see me with my Fort Worth Cats baseball cap on.

8:51 am – Shower and dress. 

9 am – Sit on gym floor and act professional on conference call because there wasn’t enough time to get upstairs.

9:45 am – Show up at my desk fashionably late.  Work.

4 pm – Explain to a coworker that it is not mean to take my younger children to watch my older child play baseball.  I think they’ll make it.  They might even learn something about teamwork, effort, goodwill, or, if they are not interested in the game, how to occupy themselves while getting fresh air for two hours.

4:15 pm – Contemplate how many errands I can get done before picking up the kids without being late vs. after getting the kids without hearing the chorus of “I’m starving.”

4:20 pm – Head to garage.  Hear Pompeii on three different radio stations while avoiding Katy Perry songs.

5:05 pm – Arrive at the good Walmart.  Go for spinach and come out with groceries for the weekend because I am on a roll.

5:42 pm – Arrive at Boys & Girls Club for the boys.  Hank is in the middle of a book about the history of the Rangers.  Dodge ridicules him for reading about a team we don’t like.

5:56 pm – My side of the conversation goes like this: “Be nice.  Don’t call your brother that.  You know he is not dumb or blind.”  Arrive at day care.  Girls are ready to go.  Mac has pacifier.  Her teachers are getting soft like me!

6:00 pm – Corda criticizes me for being the last parent to arrive.  Sings Let It Go, even though she has not seen the movie.  Explains that she learned how to tie shoes.  Yells at her brothers to stop talking about Pokemon so she can talk about her day. 

6:25 pm: Stuck behind four car accident.  Kids 1 and 4 are asleep.  Corda is still talking about friends, tornado drills, library books, what day it is, and how to spell made up words like “yellowteen” – a number that is also a color!

6:35 pm – Stop at Walgreens to pick up pictures for Hank’s science project.

6:43 pm – Drop off Hank two blocks from home to run the rest of the way for his exercise.

6:45 pm – Arrive home, start laundry and dishes left over from yesterday, and fix dinner (shrimp and spinach salad).

7:20 pm – I am the only person who spills something during dinner.

7:30 pm – Prep food for tomorrow.

7:45 pm – Decide to do the elliptical.

7:47 pm – It is brought to my attention that the baseball uniform for tomorrow is still in the dirty clothes.  Get off elliptical, step on little green army men.  Start more laundry.

7:50 pm – Bath time for girls.  Opt for sit-ups while they splash.

8:05 pm – Notice several more teeth that Mac is getting.  She goes to bed without a fuss.  Good baby she is.

8:15 pm – Hank picks 42 for movie night.  He spends the next two hours playing Minecraft instead of watching.

9:00 pm – Get emails about requests for calls over the weekend.  Wonder if I should schedule those during the baseball games or the birthday parties.

10:11 pm – Work on a project that others didn’t want to do.  Brownie points for me?

11 pm – Lights out.

2:10 am – Lights on.  Baby awake in the middle of the night for the first time in months.  Goes right back to sleep with some milk.  Check for sleeping locations of other children in case we need to evacuate in an emergency – Dodge and Hank in their own beds (very odd) and Corda on the downstairs couch (her new thing).

5:15 am – Alarm for hubby to get up for work.  Consider elliptical.  It will still be there in a couple of hours.