Lessons Learned From a Fourteen Year Old

My daughter is so wise. She’s so smart about so many things.

Lately, I feel her watching me and learning from me more than ever. And I think I’m probably failing her.

But maybe, as I learn from her, I can teach her too.

She often calls me out for apologizing too much. She reminds me that I don’t have to say I’m sorry just for taking up space. She tells me that I don’t have to apologize for existing.

She’s a smart one.

I often hear her arguing with her dad, using logic and intelligence, not caving to emotions and I want to applaud her even as I sit back and try to learn from her.

I’m a crier and I hate it. I hate that whenever I have any sort of emotional reaction, it comes out of my face in tears. I come across as a weak, weepy mess and I want it to stop!

She and her friends are constantly taking selfies that are…less than flattering and then sending them to each other. I want the confidence they have. They know they’re beautiful which is why they can take bad pictures, laugh at them and then share them. It’s adorable and I wish I could bottle the confidence they exude and sell it to those of over 30 who would rather sever a limb than share any unflattering pictures of ourselves.

She’s not afraid to try new things. This may just be something having to do with being young but I want to celebrate every single time she puts herself out there, tries something she’s never done before, sees herself as just as capable as anyone else and is willing to show the world what she can do. The honors bands and choirs she did this past year were new to her. She had to meet new people, go to new places, audition for things when she’d never auditioned before and she was rewarded for her bravery, her confidence.

I hope the world is always kind to her. I hope she always stands up for herself and those she loves. I hope that instead of changing to make herself fit the world, Alyssa makes the world change to fit her.

Summer of Firsts

Alyssa marched in her first parade as a member of the high school marching band yesterday.

The day before, she performed with the high school band at the graduation ceremony. She declared it, “Soooooo boring.” Ha! Oh my love, the boring things you have to look forward to in your life! Hahahaha.

She has to attend band camp this summer (not at all like the Band Camp of American Pie fame.) It’s held at the high school from 8am to 3pm for a week. There will be two more parades this summer.

We’re thinking of changing up our vacation this summer. For the past five years we’ve gone to Cedar Point, spending two days there and enjoying the pools, the Lake (Erie, don’t you know?) and beach and spending an afternoon in Vermillion, the small Ohio town just east of Sandusky where my mom grew up. It’s right on the Lake too and is so, so pretty.

I think this year we’re going to head south and explore the caves in Kentucky. I don’t know how long we’re going to be gone but we (my mom and I) think it will be nice to do something different. The kids are always just happy to stay in a hotel with a pool so as long as that happens, they’ll be happy.

I’ve also decided that I’m going to take advantage of some of my vacation days and take a Wednesday here and there throughout the summer. I figure we can go to the zoo in Fort Wayne, hit up the community one town over from our house, go to the lake (smallish one closer to home than Erie.) I think a mid-week break might just be nice to make the work week a bit less stressful. We’ll see if that happens or if it just makes Thursdays worse because of the work building up on the Wednesdays that I’m not here. How’s that for being a ray of sunshine?

Up and At 'Em

Each day this week I’ve had to practically drag Olivia out of bed to get ready for school. I get up between 5:30 and 6:00, depending on the day. I try to wake Liv up around 6:15 to give her time to just relax before starting in on getting dressed, doing hair, eating breakfast. She needs about ten minutes to just sit in front of the space heater (in LATE MAY!) and cook her feet before she’s really able to function enough to, oh, put on underwear.

This morning, though, was different. My alarm went off at 5:30. I turned it off and rolled over, knowing the next alarm would go off at 5:45 (what?) At 5:32, Olivia called from her bed, “Mom?”

I muttered, “What?”

She asked me something I don’t even remember and I gave some answer and told her to go back to sleep, it wasn’t time to get up yet.

About thirty seconds after the second alarm went off (WHAT?!) she started to tell me about a dream she’d had. I didn’t listen because I went back to sleep.

Because I wasn’t listening, she called, “Mom!?”

I called back, “What! Don’t you know it’s time to be sleeping not chatting?”

She laughed and continued to chat as if we were in the middle of a conversation.

This kid. One regular school days, I have to literally drag her out of bed.

But on the last day of school, she can’t wait to start the day.

I suppose I understand. Kind of. Okay, not at all. She still had to go to school even if it was the last time for third grade. Who doesn’t want to snatch even five extra minutes of sleep?

Oh yeah, Olivia…that’s who doesn’t want to snatch a few extra minutes of sleep. Crazy girl.

3-2-1

We’re almost done. This afternoon, either Tom or I will pack O’s last lunch for 3rd grade. Alyssa will pack her last lunch for 8th grade. As of 1:30 tomorrow afternoon I will have a 4th grader and a freshman in high school.

Wheee!! This whole life is passing me by so very quickly. The lives of these beautiful girls are flying by. I want to grab it by the pigtails and slow it all down.

Alas, I can’t do that. So I’m holding on tight to this ride and trying to take it all in, absorb all the love, the memories, even the irritation, so when I’m old and they’re grown I can look back and bask in love we’ve nurtured and grown.

I will confess that 3rd grade has been the most challenging so far for Miss O, though. I don’t know if it’s just that the academic requirements are the most difficult so far (they say 4th grade will be that much harder still…) or if it was the combination of teachers (she had a new special ed teacher this year as well as, obviously, a new classroom teacher (it was also her classroom teacher’s first year teaching 3rd grade, this same teacher took eight weeks off for maternity leave during the middle of the year)) but life wasn’t always easy this year.

I got more emails and notes home this year regarding behaviors, requesting suggestions for how to motivate her, and just informing us of issues than we ever received before.

Olivia can be…stubborn. Yeah, that’s a good word. She either wants to work hard and totally gets the work or she…doesn’t. I honestly don’t think she can control these things either. Math is difficult and when we sit down to do math, I can see her shutting down. She needs a lot of one-on-one time and redirection when working on math. She loves to write but sometimes those fine motor skills get in the way and she doesn’t space her letters well, making her handwriting hard to read.

She wants to do well. I know this. She beams whenever anyone tells her she’s doing well. She knows she’s smart she just has a hard time showing it sometimes.

Her fashion sense, however, continues to be impeccable.

She brought home a sheet of paper on which she and her classmates had to write nice things about each other. She got a lot of compliments on her hair and her outfits. One kid did suggest that she might talk to her classmates a little more. How she laughed at that one.

As she gets older, Olivia is beginning to understand that she’s different from her peers. She pointed out to me several times this year that she did math sheets that were different from her classmates’ sheets. She is still very socially awkward and she knows it. So far, she doesn’t seem bothered enough by her social awkwardness to do anything about it but it’s only a matter of time.

I want so badly for her to have friends. I want her to come out of her shell and talk to her peers. I want them to see how funny she is, how sweet she is, how imaginative she can be. I want her to have the kind of friendships her sister has and honestly, I’m not sure she’ll get that.

We’re trying though. This summer we’ll work on math facts, we’ll read, she’ll write stories both on her tablet and one paper. We’ll have playdates with classmates and encourage one on one communication between her and her peers. We’ll help her maintain the academic gains she made this year and prepare her for 4th grade.

And we’ll continue to help her remember how to behave in public. We’ll encourage good behaviors and develop consequences for less favorable behavior. We’ll keep on striving to reach her fullest potential.

Car Trouble

I’m so irritated by my car right now. It’s a 2012 Chevrolet Equinox. I loved it when we first got it. We bought it from an older gentleman who’d purchased it new. It had very low miles and we’ve had it for about three years.

When we were in Bowling Green several weeks ago for Lyss’s choir thing, my mom, Liv and I were driving around town wasting time until it was time for A’s concert. While sitting at a stoplight, my car dinged at me, three little warning chimes and then the StabiliTrak light came on and a warning came up on the console telling me that “Engine Power is Reduced.”

Yikes!

The car did not die, though, so when the light turned green, we limped over to a parking lot and turned the car off. We let it sit for about ten seconds and I turned it on again. The warning lights/statements were still on.

I turned the car off and called Tom. While on the phone with him, I turned the car on again and this time, the warnings were off. Well, except the ‘check engine’ light, it stayed on and has stayed on since.

We were an hour and a half from home. This was not a good feeling, knowing I was having car trouble and we were that far from home.

We obviously made it home and all was well for a couple of weeks.

Until Saturday, when the stupid StabiliTrak light came on AGAIN, this time while idling in the driveway while waiting to pick up Lyss from a sleepover after the JH dance.

I turned the car off, waited two minutes, turned it back on; still being warned about reduced engine power and the need to service the stabilitrak. I turned it off again, waited, no reset this time. The lights remained on.

We drove home at forty miles an hour. Thankfully, we were only about six miles from home. But ugh! So annoying!

So Tom spent most of Saturday and Sunday working on the stupid car. He changed some parts, cleaned some other parts, checked out a lot of YouTube videos of other people working on cars and on Sunday afternoon he declared it fixed. He’d driven it to town, exchanged some parts, put new parts on right there in the parking lot of Auto Zone and drove it home. He swore that it drove better than it had in months.

I test drove it to my mom’s. We sat in her driveway for a couple of seconds (literal seconds!) letting it idle because, yeah, that’s when the stabilitrak warning light comes on.

IT CAME ON AGAIN! This time I took pictures of all the lights and warnings because I wasn’t actually sure my darling, devoted husband believed me when I’d told him about them before.

See, he’d never actually seen these lights and warnings. And the parts he’d replaced had nothing to do with the stupid Stabilitrak and he was getting REALLY annoyed with me asking about it.

And I was getting annoyed with having to ask about it. I just wanted it fixed, whatever that meant. I hate having a car I don’t feel like I can rely on. I mean, I’ve driven some clunker in my day but this car is NOT a clunker. I shouldn’t feel like I have to rev the engine while sitting at a stop light to keep it from idling too low and having the warning lights come on again.

So…where are we right now?

The check engine light is still on. The “Service Stabilitrak” warning is off. There is no warning that the engine has reduced power but there is a weird clicking that can be heard when the car is running.

Tom thinks we need to just trade the stupid thing in. He has done some research and apparently Chevrolet was going quite a bit of experimenting on the Equinox between 2010 and 2012 and we got one that doesn’t seem to have quite been done right.

We don’t want to deal with constant repairs or warnings or issues. We just want a car we can rely on to start each day, get us where we’re going and then get us home again. That’s not asking too much.

Speaking of Abandoment Issues

Last Friday on our way home from a choir contest (they got a superior rating!) Alyssa played a video for me and my mom. It was of Avi talking about needing to take a break from Pentatonix.

Alyssa was…sad. Is that the right word? I’m not sure. She was concerned and confused. She wants to support Avi but she also wants Pentatonix to continue being who they are, making the amazing music they make and she worries if they replace Avi with some other bass, well, it just won’t be the same.

She worked her way through these emotions all weekend long. She cried a little. She wrote PTX Forever on her wrist in solidarity with the rest of the Pentatonix of the world.

I teased that this was like when the Beatles broke up. Which, obviously, it’s not to that scale but she and a lot of the more…fanatic…fans were fairly upset.

She was obsessed with reading every single tweet that was tweeted, watching every reaction video posted, responding to all Instagram pics posted. She talked about it pretty much non-stop, going back and forth between her love for Avi himself and her fandom for Pentatonix as a whole.

I reminded her often that in his announcement video, Avi said he was taking a break, not that he was quitting forever. He said he’s going to continue to make music but that the breakneck speed at which Pentatonix has toured and traveled and performed has become too much for him and he needs to slow down, regroup, figure out where to go from here.

She understands but she’s also fourteen and feels all the things so deeply, as only a teenage girl can feel them. She’s doing better already. She’s consoling herself with the fact that Avi is performing in all the events that PTX committed to do before his announcement, so he’ll be in Indianapolis on August 10, which is when we’ll also be in Indy to attend the Pentatonix concert.

It also helps that she’s super busy with end of school year events. Tomorrow is Olivia’s annual field day, it’s also the Junior High Dance. Monday we have to attend an academic awards ceremony for Alyssa. Next Thursday is their last day and it ends at 1:30.

I’d say bring on summer but summer is bringing its own version of busyness with marching band, band camp, summer intervention.

Junior High Band/Choir Concert

We attended our last EVER Junior High Band/Choir concert on Monday. I make the distinction that it was Junior High because, duh, we’ve got four years of high school band/choir concerts ahead of us.

Fun times, indeed.

Actually, it really was fine. I had to get there a half hour early because Alyssa had to be there a half hour early and even four miles seems silly to drive back home when it’s only a half hour. I sat next to Alyssa’s friend Tessa’s mom, which was nice. She’s lovely. Actually, we’re really lucky because most of Lyss’s friends’ moms are lovely. Oh, damn, I just realized that if most of her friends’ moms are lovely, what if I am the NOT lovely mom of that friend group? Unnerving thought!

Tom and Olivia arrived at 6:59 for the 7:00 concert. And get this…Olivia behaved VERY well. I mean, like REALLY well. She was a paragon of appropriate public behavior. It was awesome.

The concert began with the choir, then the fourth grade performed using their recorders.

Yes, it was as ‘awesome’ as one might think. Though to be fair to this year’s fourth graders, they were actually better than I’ve ever heard a group of fourth grade recorder players. So that’s something.

After the fourth grade, the tiny little fifth grade band played. They were…fifth graders.

The sixth graders were also…sixth graders.

The junior high band, though, was pretty great. I mean, for junior high students, right? But since my kid was one of them of course they were awesome.

I really am proud of how far she’s come as a musician and a performer. She seems to enjoy herself so much these days as she’s making music either through singing or her flute.

The sad part, though, is the awesome band director who has been at the school for four years is leaving at the end of this school year. They haven’t hired a new ‘instrumental music teacher’ yet, and Lyss and all her friends are very hopeful that they’ll find someone as awesome as Ms. P has been. I hope so too. I’d hate for her musical education to suffer because of a bad teacher.

But here’s to another year in the books…almost. Only six more lunches to pack. Just saying.