Self-Evaluation

Okay, so I’ve been watching that new show on NBC This is Us. I really like it.

In the second episode, a mother of three asks her husband how he thinks they’re doing as parents. She gives them a six, then ups it to a seven and admits that she believes she’s actually a nine but he’s bringing their score down with his drinking and late nights. She does tell him that when he’s there, when he’s sober, he’s actually a better parent than she is.

But this isn’t about the show. It’s about my score as a parent.

These days, I’d give myself a solid seven. I think I’m doing okay; not great, but okay. My girls know they are loved. They are clothed and fed (separate dinners each night because…well, I guess it ups my score.)

They seem to be getting enough sleep and they’re doing pretty well in school. Alyssa has a lot of friends and has her interest in which I take a decent amount of interest as well, because I know that’s important to her.

Olivia has a vivid imagination and I listen (mostly) attentively when she tells me her imaginings, her stories, her dreams.

I hug them both as often as they want and they get a lot of physical affection from me, which ranges from hugs, to holding hands (while watching TV) to back scratches and gentle touches to soothe a tired nine year old to sleep.

But I could be better. I could yell less. I could scold less. I could set more limits and enforce them better.

I realized last night that one thing that would make me a better parent is if I set a bedtime and then just took the girls to bed at that time so I could have even a half hour to myself.

See, our routine right now is at 8pm, we sit on the couch together, me between A and O. I read to Olivia while Alyssa watched Pentatonix videos on her tablet. We finish reading at 8:15, at which time I take Olivia’s glasses and put them away. Then I settle back on the couch and rub/scratch Olivia’s back until she falls asleep with her head in my lap. This can take anywhere from fifteen minutes to forty-five minutes. Which is frustrating for me because, dude, JUST GO TO SLEEP.

And so because sometimes I’ve scratched/rubbed her back for up to forty-five minutes, many of those minutes with her twisting and turning and rolling and fidgeting with her blanket or her nightgown, I’ve had it when those forty-five minutes are up. And then I yell or I tell her sternly to settle down and go to sleep. Our peaceful time if over and I’ve turned into grumpy mom.

If I were to institute a bedtime for her of 8:30, we could still read and rub/scratch back for a bit but then when 8:30 rolled around we could calmly head up the stairs, I could kiss her good night, hug her and then tuck her into bed. Grumpy mom would never have to make an appearance. My score would move from a seven up into the eight range just like that.

Alyssa, on the other hand, could stay up until 9:30, doing her thing, sitting next to me watching either television with me or watching videos on her tablet but at 9:30, I could just send her to bed. There would be no hissing at her to turn her tablet down because I can’t take the noise of Tom’s TV from the family room, my TV and her tablet all being noisy at me. Again, if I knew there was an end time to her tablet time, to her sitting next to me and showing me every single comment on every single video, I could take a more sincere interest in the things she shows me and grouchy mom would stay away.

These are definitely things I need to consider implementing. It would be good for all of us. And grouchy mom could possibly pack her bags, never to return. If that happened, I could see myself hitting a score of nine in no time.

Sometimes Music Hurts

Last night when I got home from work, Alyssa was at the kitchen table, doing homework. She looked tired. I kissed her head and asked her how her day was.

She said, “Five hours of playing the flute is tiring.”

Yeah. I can imagine.

She’s taking part in an invitational concert band and she’s had to meet with her band director after school to practice, work with her classmates to practice and yesterday, the participants were bussed from our school to the neighboring school where the concert will take place so all the students from all the schools could practice and perform together before Sunday, which is when the concert is scheduled to take place.

She took a break from her homework to tell me about the horribly uncomfortable chairs that were provided for the day of practice. She said, “If we wanted to play well and sound good, we had to sit on the very edge of the chairs with our backs away from the back. Five hours of that was torture.”

Poor kid, having to suffer through good posture and all that.

Wait, that sounds sarcastic. I really do feel for her. I know that it’s hard to do something unfamiliar and then to go back to the school, pick up all the homework she missed while away and have to come home to do it. And, wait, she also had to study for a test! Eighth grade is off to a roaring, awesome (seriously, no sarcasm here) start. It’s just hitting her that each year gets a little harder, a little more intense. Add in the extras, like this invitational band thing, and well, it can be a little tiring.

But, I told her, sometimes we have to suffer for our art. Music is her art. And she’s very good it at. She works hard to be good at it and I’m very proud of her. She takes it seriously and wants to be the very best she can be. I wish I’d had half her work ethic when I was her age. (Hell, I wish I had half her work ethic now…)

Though to be frank, her work ethic applies to the things she enjoys, so…maybe I do have half her work ethic if I compare it to how hard I’m willing to work doing things I enjoy. I guess maybe she’s a lot like me after all.

My Shadow(s)

Yes, that’s not a typo. I have two daughters and so, most days, I have two shadows.

Though to be fair to Alyssa, now that she’ edging in on fourteen, she’s become less of a shadow and more of her own person. That and she’s usually too busy watching a Pentatonix video on her phone or tablet (or maintaining her TWO Pentatonix-fan accounts on Instagram) to follow me from room to room and floor to floor she used to and like her sister still does.

Olivia, though, is still very much in shadow-mode. From the moment I get home from work, she follows me, telling me about her day, regaling me with stories about her imaginary friends, which now include the members of Pentatonix because Alyssa has inundated our house with this group and Olivia adores her sister and so had embraced them as her very own loves.

Though because Olivia doesn’t like to use actual names for the members of Pentatonix, she calls them by her own, very creative names:
Avi Kaplan is known as Weird Dot Guy. This is because of the makeup he wore in one of their videos.
Kirsten Maldonado is The Girl Pentatonix
Scott Hoying is Blue Guy because he wears blue on one of their album covers.
Mitch Grassi is Green Guy because, yes, you guessed it he wears green on one of their album covers.
Kevin Olusola is either Yellow guy (see above for reason) or Beat Boxing Guy because, yes, he’s the beat boxer. Olivia imagines herself a beatboxer. It’s adorable when she tries.

There are moments, though, when having a constant shadow can get a little, shall we say, annoying. Those moments like, oh, I don’t know, when I have to use the bathroom.

Some days I’ll actually tell her, “I’m just going to pee. You don’t have to follow me.”

She usually laughs and said, “What? Don’t you want an audience?” And then she follows me to the bathroom.

I’ve tried locking the door but this ends up being more annoying than helpful because she stands outside the door, twisting the knob, knocking on the door, asking me why I locked it. It’s just easier to let my shadow in from the start.

I know this won’t last forever.

I know I’m lucky to have such…loving children.

I know all this.

But I do wish I could pee in private once in awhile.

Teacher of the Year

Where can I nominate someone for Teacher of the Year?

Olivia’s teacher, Mrs. H, has gone above and beyond so far this year. When we last spoke, I suggested that I send a baggie of candies to school with Olivia. These treats were to be hidden in Mrs. H’s desk and at the end of the day, if she’d had more good moments than bad, Olivia would get to pick a piece of candy for the bus ride home.

During our conversation in which the candies came up, I mentioned earlier that last year Olivia was offered the option of a doodle pad on the corner of her desk and when she felt the urge to doodle or scribble on her worksheets, she should do the writing on the pad.

Olivia hated this idea because none of the other kids in her class had a doodle pad and her having one made her different. Olivia knows she’s different but she doesn’t enjoy having it made clear to the rest of the world on a constant basis.

Mrs. H listened to me. She heard me.

Last Friday Olivia came home and asked me if I thought she was the only kid in her class who gets Jolly Ranchers if she’s had a good day.

I said, “Well, since we sent in the Jolly Ranchers, yes, you’re the only kid who gets them.”

She shook her head and told me, “No! Mrs. H brought in a big jar of Jolly Ranchers of her own and EVERYONE gets one if they have a good day. She put them on the counter instead of on her desk and we all get to pick one when we have a good day.”

Oh my heart! This teacher took my idea for reinforcing good behavior in Olivia and made it about the whole class. She took a moment, saw a need and took away the possibility that Olivia would feel singled out by making Jolly Ranchers a reward for EVERYONE who has a good day.

This is Mrs. H’s first year teaching third grade. She was Olivia’s KinderKids teacher (pre-kindergarten) and I wasn’t sure at the beginning of the year how this would go because Olivia never really connected with Mrs. H back in KinderKids. But Mrs. H is going above and beyond this year and I’m so grateful to her for making the effort to not only help Olivia have better days but also to help Olivia feel like she’s no different from anyone else in her class.

What more could I ask from a teacher?

Chevron

I don’t know where she discovered it, but Olivia has decided that the chevron pattern is her very favorite pattern ever.

In fact, she wishes I’d named Alyssa Chevron so that we could call Alyssa “Chevy” or “Ronni”. This is all much to Alyssa’s annoyance and mild disgust. But then, these days most of what her sister and I laugh about annoys/disgusts Alyssa, which is all the more reason for us to laugh about those very things.

We found Olivia a black and white chevron patterned dress a couple of weeks ago. She discovered she already has a pink/white/pink chevron shirt and she’s on the lookout for anything else that happens to be in any color of what she believes to be the best pattern ever invented.

Have I mentioned lately that Olivia amuses me more than ever these days? She’s funny, exasperating, sweet, infuriating, delightful and incredibly argumentative all at the same time.

We came across a shirt last weekend (it was in the men’s section at Walmart) that described Olivia so perfectly that if it had come in an xx-small, I’d have bought the darned thing and told her I found it in the girls’ department.

It said, “I’m not arguing, I’m explaining how I’m right.”

That’s Olivia right there. This kid argues about arguing. Some days it’s hysterical, some days maddening. All days, I’m lucky she’s mine and that she’s here to drive us crazy with humor one minute and irritation the next.

No-Guilt Zone

I feel guilty about a lot of things. I feel guilty that I don’t give my kids the very best of me all the time. I feel guilty that my house isn’t as clean as I feel like it should be. I feel guilty that I carry to much weight and so I’m not as healthy as I should be. I feel guilty that my house sometimes smells weird (even though we all know that’s because my husband cooks weird foods and THAT’S where the smell comes from.)

But one thing I do not feel guilty about is the fact that my husband is the food preserver of our house. He’s canned salsa, green beans (I think he canned 105 jars of green beans this year alone, yikes!) He’s also canned tomatoes and tomato juice and he’s frozen a bunch of pears.

And I feel no guilt over all the work he’s put into doing this. I feel no guilt over the fact that I have not helped…at all…with this endeavor. Okay, wait. I did help. I snapped the first batch of green beans. But then he did the rest and I don’t feel guilty over that.

See, canning and freezing food is not something I’d choose to do if my husband chose not to do it himself. I don’t see it as a need the way I see cleaning the toilets as a need. No one else is going to come and clean our toilets. But I can go to the grocery store and buy beans and pears and salsa. So, if he didn’t do it, I would buy those things.

And because he WANTS to do those things, I don’t feel guilty that he does them with no help from me.

My mom preserves a lot of food too. She, like my husband, works her butt off from late-July until mid-September, canning, freezing, pickling. And hey, good for her. I enjoy the fruits (and vegetables, ha!) of her labors. But again, I don’t feel bad for not doing it myself.

I would like to figure out how to transfer this sense of non-guilt into other aspects of my life. Eh, maybe after the nap I won’t feel guilty about taking.

Halloween Preview

Because she’s awesome, my mom finished Olivia’s Halloween costume (Draculaura) yesterday and brought it over for Liv to try on last night.

Olivia loves it. She’s so happy with it, she’s planning to wear it on Saturday as a ‘going to town’ costume.

I reminded her that we need to try and keep it clean and stain-free until Halloween and she assured me that she’d be very careful. Ha! We’ll see.

She’s very happy with the wig I bought her for her costume. I’ve let her wear it a few times but only around the house and when she’s done wearing it, I put it back in the plastic bag came in. I’ve told her we need to keep it in decent shape until Halloween, just like the costume.

The costume is ‘just’ a white skirt, a pink vest and a white turtle neck shirt. I say ‘just’ because those things were simple for my mom to sew. If I’d tried, I’d have gone through ten yards of fabric and nothing to show for it except a broken sewing machine and traumatized children after they’d heard my swearing at the machine.

It feels good to have her costume ready. She’s so excited already. She asked me last night what I thought her classmates would wear and I told her that was part of the fun, not knowing and being surprised on the day of the Halloween party.

She nodded her agreement and then twirled away, enjoying the swirliness of the skirt her awesome Gram made her.