Twice

You would think that after stepping on a dead mouse left by Orville as a trophy just outside the door to the garage, I’d have learned to look before stepping.

You would be wrong.

The first mouse I stepped on, months ago, was a fresh kill, but Orville had managed to kill the poor thing via internal injuries, thus there was no blood.

The one I stepped on the night before last? It was not so cleanly murdered.

There was blood. And it ended up on my foot.

Ick and ewww and gross and ugh!!!!

To add insult to injury, Tom, who was sitting all of six feet away from where I’d stepped on the nasty, bloody, squishy thing, didn’t even know I’d done it. He didn’t hear my gagging and my screeching and my near-hyperventilating. No. He swears he didn’t.

So I got the litter scooper and the dust pan and managed to get the corpse onto litter scooper while looking at it as little as possible and took it out and threw it in the field. Orville trailed me, meowing constantly, as if seeking approval for his kill. I snapped at him that I was not impressed.

I realize this is what cats do. They kill mice and moles and birds and then leave the evidence behind either in celebration, as if saying, “Hey, look what I did! Give me a treat because I’m awesome.” Or perhaps they’re leaving a bloody trail to show you, “Hey, look what I can do. Give me a treat or you’re next.”

Ahem.

So, perhaps after this last nightmare experience, I will look before stepping into the garage. One can only hope.

Good Enough

During our drive to my cousin’s house this weekend, I mentioned something about worrying whether or not Alyssa gets enough of my time.

My mom glanced at me with a small smile and said, “Don’t worry about her, she’s fine. You’ve done a great job of making sure she knows how much you love her.”

You guys…that brought tears to my eyes. I’ve worried since before Olivia was even born about whether or not Alyssa would feel displaced by her little sister. I’ve worried about my own ability to decently parent two kids. I’ve worried that I’m not nearly good enough for either of them, let alone both of them. And all that worry was before Olivia was born screaming like an injured kitten, needing more time and energy that I ever imagined a baby could need. Once we realized the extent of her needs, oh, the worry for Alyssa escalated beyond belief.

To have my mom reassure me that I’m doing a good job was a very significant thing for me.

Last night, Alyssa was snapping at Olivia for every little thing. I finally pulled Alyssa to the side and told her that being gentle, even when reprimanding, will get the results she wants much more quickly than being sarcastic or screechy.

I told her that I realize that sometimes I’m grouchier than she deserves and that I promise to work on being gentler too. She nodded her understanding and went back to flipping around the room.

Kids do what they see. They learn how to respond to stress and fatigue by watching their parents respond to those things.

And I realize that I’m grouchier than necessary a lot of the time. So Alyssa and I made a pact. We’ll both try to be gentler with each other and with Olivia. I will model gentleness and she’ll learn it from me. Even when we say no, we can say it gently, I reminded her and myself.

I’m so tired these days. Olivia’s sleep pattern has been screwed up for the past two weeks. Ever since she hurt her arm, she wakes up at least four times a night. Just last night, she woke up, realized I wasn’t next to her and started crying. I called over to her, telling her to come to me. She just sat there, crying, until I got up to get her. It is as if she’s reverted to the infant stage all over again.

Didn’t I once say I’d never go through the infant stage again? This is why. I do not do sleep deprivation very well. I get mean and grouchy and no matter how hard I try to tell myself to be gentle, when I’m tired, I can’t. I just can’t.

So here we are.

Except just last night Olivia raised both arms over her head and declared, “My arm feels better!”

Which means that this sleep issue is no longer about pain and is now about habit. We need to nip this thing in the bud.

Stifled

I’m not sure what it is.

I feel…stifled. There is so much to say and yet I don’t think I should say it. At least not there, publicly. I can’t quite treat this like a journal, the place where I’d put all my thoughts and fears and worries because a journal would be private, right?

This is not. And I don’t really want it to be.

Except, that means there are things I need to stifle, to hold back and examine and see if I really, truly want to put it out there.

So this is me, stifled. For now.

Unproductive

Not much production today. We visited one of my cousins who recently moved back to the area. Her house is lovely, old, lots of character.

There's something to be said for deciding the laundry and vacuuming can wait another day and just hitting the road for a mini roadtrip.

That's what we did. My cousin lives over an hour away and the girls and I jumped in my mom's car, didn't care that the laundry wasn't going to do itself and enjoyed the day.

It was a very girly day. My cousin's reason for having us over was a Pampered Chef party. While I ordered a fwe things, it wasn't the main reason for going.

The main reason was to spend a day with my mom, daughters, aunts and cousins.

And it was good.

Sometimes being unproductive can create the best of memories.

Like the one my girls made today of standing on my cousin's front porch, watching lightening flash and rain pour down, feeling the mist of that rain on their faces as they danced at the edge of the porch, safe yet adventurous.

It might just be the best productions yet.

Productive Week

In those instances when I'm productive, I often wonder why I’m not productive more often. I always feel so good about myself when I’m accomplished something. And yet…more often than not, I’m not so very productive because the laziness is so much easier to embrace, even with the self-loathing that comes with it.

Productivity sort of gives me a high that I do so enjoy and yet when I’m being unproductive, I forget about that high and roll into a ball of sloth.

So yes, it’s been a productive week.

How, you ask? Well, don’t get your hopes up too high and think that I might have taken up jogging and repainted every closet in my house. Oh no, nothing that ambitious.

But you see, when you start at the very bottom of the scale of productivity, it isn’t hard for the smallest things to feel like big victories.

What I did this week was pay off my Kohl’s credit card. That $60 I spent on t-shirts a few weeks ago was really hanging over my head.

I also purchased Cedar Point tickets on line. My mom and I are taking Alyssa and a friend to the amusement park next week. I went ahead and paid for parking at the same time I got the tickets. So efficient! Olivia gets to spend the day at home with Tom. At five and half, she’s not quite ready for an amusement park. She’d be exhausted and ready to come home before we’d spend two hours there. Besides all that, she’s short.

Ohh and the best of my productivity is that I signed Alyssa up for gymnastics classes for the year. Sure, I only paid the sign-up fee and the first month’s tuition but she’s signed up and can’t stand that classes won’t start for another three weeks.

Did I mention that Alyssa had major Olympic fever? She puts on a gymnastic suit every single morning and doesn’t change out of it until I make her put on pajamas each night. She doesn’t just enjoy watching gymnastics though, she’s found the fun of diving, swimming and even volleyball. I love that she’s so into it.

So that’s it, you’re thinking? It took you all week to do those few things and you’re calling it a productive week?

Yes, yes I am. See the benefit of normally being as active as a slug? You do a few things over the span of a few days and suddenly you’re productive.

Speaking of productive, Tom…now he’s gotten a lot done this week. He’s picked tomatoes, peppers, onions and chopped those very things and made them into salsa. He then canned that salsa to be enjoyed this winter. Though we’re not waiting until the first snowfall to sample his works. Oh no, many chips swimming in salsa have been eaten this week. Can I add that to my productivity list? No? Bummer.

Tom has also picked beans, snapped those beans and then canned those beans. Oh, that was such a production.

I took the girls to bed earlier than usual last night just to get them out of earshot of his vicious irritation with the bean canning process. It wasn’t pretty.

He’s also picked cucumbers and zucchini which we’ve shared with several aunts and uncles around the area. We’re drowning in zucchini over here.

But we’re being productive. And no, I’m not keeping score because he’d win and that would make me want to go lay down and recuperate from the disappointment of not keeping up with him. So instead, I’ll do things my way and marvel at how he does things his way. And in the end, we’re both as productive as we need to be to feel good about ourselves.

Sleepy Gymnastics

My life is good. It really is.

And yet, I found myself looming over a sobbing Olivia at 1:30 this morning, hissing, “You wouldn’t need a tissue if you were sleeping instead of sitting there crying.”

Why was she crying? Because instead of lying in bed right beside me, she was in a different bed that put her all of six feet away from me. She couldn’t touch me from there, don’t you know?

I’d spend the previous hour hovering on that brink between sleep and wakefulness, listening to her breath hitch, waiting for the cries. In the week since she hurt her arm, she’s formed the habit of waking every hour or so just to check and see if I’m next to her.

It’s exhausting.

So why don’t I make Alyssa sleep in her own bed and just sleep next to Olivia in the big bed? Because I hate the big bed. It’s so, so uncomfortable. Obviously, we need a new mattress and yet I want a new couch before we splurge on a new mattress. See, we’ve waited to get a new couch until there was no longer anyone in the house peeing on the furniture. We haven’t had a pee accident in almost a year so I’m on the lookout for a new couch.

And I tell myself each night that having someone, even skinny little Alyssa next to her, will fool Olivia into thinking she’s sleeping next to soft, squishy Mom.

It never, ever works. And so for the past week, I’ve been woken up at least five times every single night and finally end up sharing a twin bed with Olivia, who is a flipping bed hog like you wouldn’t believe. Then, around 4 every morning, I move to the THIRD bed in the room (we’ve got a freaking DORM set up going on over here) where I managed to get the best rest of the night for an hour and a half before the alarm starts going off at 5:30.

The Olympics have totally inspired Alyssa to get back into gymnastics. She’s lost her mind about it, actually. She flips and jumps and spins all day long.

While watching the team finals the other night, she noticed that all the girls have these fancy wrist guard things and she’s ‘hinted’ that she wants some.

I say ‘hinted’ because the girl isn’t all that subtle. She think she is, especially when I don’t let on that I know exactly what she’s saying because most evenings she finally gives up the ‘hinting’ and just says it right out, “Maybe we could go to Dunham’s Sports Center this weekend and look for them.”

I’ve explained to her that until she actually NEEDS that kind of support (she can cartwheel and stand on her hands, she can flip from a handstand to a backbend and yesterday she started out in a bridge and managed to flip her legs back up and over, but that’s the extent of her gymnastics repertoire.) I am not paying for something like wrist guards.

She hears me but doesn’t seem to believe that I mean it because she keeps asking, keeps hinting, keeps suggesting we look at them.

I’ll be signing her up for recreational gymnastics this week.

The tough thing is trying to explain to her that just because she’s starting back up with classes doesn’t mean that in eight years she’ll be competing in the Olympics herself. I’ve tried to be gentle as I counter her aspirations, explaining that those girls have been working at this for years and years and years. They work out so many hours a week that she wouldn’t believe it if I told her the actual number of hours. I’ve reminded her that there are only five girls competing for the USA out of countless girls who do gymnastics every single day. We are not all Olympic level athletes. I don’t want to crush her dreams but I also don’t want to set her up for crushing disappointment.

Besides, she’s probably going to be too tall to be a competitive gymnast anyway. So yeah.

Parenting is hard. Supporting your nine-year-old as she imagines standing on the podium at the Olympics accepting a gold medal while also gently reminding her of the reality that the majority faces is tough. I want her to soar, to reach for the impossible but I also want her to know when something really, truly is out of reach.

It makes me think of those people who audition for American Idol, the ones who really, truly cannot sing to save their lives. Why did their friends and family let them go to those auditions? Why didn’t someone gently take them aside and say, “Sweetie, I love you and think you’re voice is glorious but…I’m not sure the world is going to agree with me?”

I kind of want to do that for my girl. I want to tell her that I think her cartwheels are the very best in the world but that I don’t think the Olympic judges are going to agree with me. But I don’t want to be that mom who can’t help but smother my child with reality. I want her to dream, and imagine greatness and work toward it while keeping her feet firmly on the ground. That’s possible, yes?

Graceful Klutz

That’s how my mom described Alyssa. She of the long limbs and flawless cartwheels.

Alyssa started walking when she was ten and a half months old. She started doing cartwheels when she was five year old. She flips, she rolls, she walks on her hands and rides bike like it’s something she was born doing.

But she also bangs her shins on end tables, knocks her wrist on door jams and scraps her toes on curbs.

I think she’s growing so fast that she’s no really aware of her own body and how it fits into the space around her. She forgets that she’s no longer only three and a half feet tall. She doesn’t remember to compensate for her now four foot eight inch frame.

Her legs are constantly flailing about as she carthwheels or handstands her way through the house.

But really, the knocking of knees into walls and hands into desk corners wouldn’t be that big a deal if she didn’t to tell us about every single injury.

Wait, the telling of the injuries wouldn’t be a big deal if she didn’t seem to think that every single bang or scrape was in need of an ice pack and a bandaid or even, sometimes, an Ace bandage wrapped around the injured limb.

Oh, the drama when she draws a drop of blood! You’d think she’d just lost a pint from her poor ravaged body.

I dread the drama of adolescences even as I roll my eyes when she cries out, “Owww, I just scratched myself.”

It’s hard to feel much sympathy for someone who manages to inflict more pain (though I do wonder about her pain threshold, I fear it is quite low) upon herself in an hour that most people manage in a week.

But I always kiss the offered injury, make the necessary coos of concern and then shoo her away knowing she’ll be back in a matter of minutes with a new owie and the need for more sympathy.