Come On, Get Happy

There are several exciting events happening in our area this weekend. Less than an hour to the north, 16 tall ships sailed into the harbor in Green Bay for a three-day festival. And a half-hour's drive south, Oshkosh is hosting the annual Experimental Aircraft Association Convention, an annual hullabaloo attended by some 750,000 people.

Working for a lifestyle publication, I get to learn of all these fabulous occurences at least two months in advance, fantasize about how much the kids, my beloved, and I will enjoy them...and then occasionally berate myself because I'm too tired as a result of working at said publication to actually get out and enjoy the Fox Cities lifestyle, thus robbing my children of their rightful enrichment.

Today has been such a day. The sun is shining, and I spent nearly the entire afternoon asleep. It was a Family Nap, which redeemed it somewhat, but it still felt a lot like wasted time.

Once I'd fully regained my senses, had a fortifying handful of Life cereal and a peach ("They sure are full of juice, Mommy," my daughter said), and read a couple of magazine articles until I didn't feel crabby anymore, I went upstairs to ask my silently playing son if he wanted to go for a bike ride.

"Where?" he asked. "Dairy Queen?"

"Well, I didn't think that," I said. "Just a ride."

"I don't really want to go for a ride. I just want to play," he told me. "I haven't had a lot of time to play."

He was right, at least as far as his own precious toys were concerned.

"You really like to play by yourself," I said, assuming he'd been happily doing so for the two hours his sister and I had been conked out. "What do you like about playing by yourself?"

"It's really quiet," he said. "And you can do whatever you want, and no one wrecks what you're building. It's just nice and quiet," he trailed off.

"Do you ever get lonely when you play by yourself?" I asked.

"No, I get happy when I play by myself," he said.

Proof positive that ignoring your kids is, as I've often believed, sometimes the best parenting tactic available. And that kids don't need tall ship festivals or aircraft conventions to grow up balanced and wise.

Think Yourself Happy

Exceptional Things I Did Today

(1) Turned the apparent hatch of an entire colony of houseflies somewhere within the confines of our home into fun in the form of a "fly hunt" with my son. (I will not reveal how many flies we killed; it is too mortifying.)

(2) Untangled an angry nest of beads and necklaces in the fabric-covered, floral-print, hinged jewelry box "inherited" from my beloved's grandmother after she died just over a year ago. Patience is not a virtue I have mastered--until it comes to working the knots out of jewelry. It is one of my lesser known talents.

(3) Set up a "jewelry store" with the liberated items to the pleasure of my daughter.

(4) Made the "pilot's dashboard" my son spotted in the book 365 TV-Free Activities to Do with Your Kids with a small cardboard box, the lid from a container of ricotta cheese, a stray screw I found on the kitchen counter, a piece of rope, and an empty toilet paper roll that I had fortuitously left in the bathroom this morning. (That may make me "MomGuyver.")

(5) Managed to construct a relatively balanced meal of leftover pancakes, hot dogs, and broccoli from a pathetically understocked kitchen--without having a breakdown when the slightly healthier eggs that had been slated for the role of protein had a suspect milkiness about their whites. (When the only fresh fruits and vegetables you have left in the house are a single lime, half a red onion, and a wilted partial head of Romaine, you know it's time to head to the market.)

(6) Kept my cool when an impossibly pointy Lego subassembly left on the bathroom floor wedged itself about half an inch into my left forefoot.

(7) Walked away after the second request for a drink of water instead of sticking around for the third, fourth, and fifth.

(8) Wrote something positive in my blog even though I didn't start feeling positive until I began composing this list in my head.

Another Example of the Surprising Wisdom of Children

I kept our girl home from school today given that she spiked a fever last night after 12 or so hours "in the clear." When she awoke this morning at 98.6 F, I was tempted to ignore her day care's 24-hours-fever-free policy, but realizing that it's in the best interest of everyone, I reluctantly adhered to it.

Still, I had work to do, so I put in a video under the guise of "allowing her to rest" so that I could do some copyediting. After a few episodes of Little People, we drove to my office, where I spoke briefly with our intern and parked my girl on my chair as I shoved a couple of files into my tote bag. Needing a paper clip for some documents I was gathering, I opened the desk drawer, much to the youngster's amazement. So many interesting things to see! Scissors! Post-It Notes!

She messed around in there as I continued to shove about four times the work I would actually do in the afternoon into my satchel. Just as I was finishing up, I stood to hear a dulled slamming of the desk drawer--and to see that the slam had been dulled by two fingers of her right hand. Her mouth was frozen open, poised for the blood-curdling scream that is always delayed proportionately to the degree of pain in which the young lass finds herself.

Two things registered in my mind, almost simultaneously: Get digits out of drawer. Remove child from small room where colleague is conducting phone interview for story.

I carried her out to the lobby, where she let loose for all she was worth. The flesh beneath two of her fingernails was purple, and her face was approaching the same hue. I looked up to see all my co-workers within my line of vision agape and staring--and when I caught their eye, they quickly looked down and pretended that this was the least interesting thing that had happened that morning. And on she wailed.

It will be no surprise that she fell asleep during the drive home...and that, as a result of her in-transit snooze, she of course didn't even take the nap that I was relying on to do all the work that I had just picked up.

When I carried a tray of grilled cheese sandwiches into my bedroom where I'd plopped her with an ice pack while I made lunch, she smiled for the first time since the incident. Though she still wouldn't let me so much as look at her fingers, she did let me (and the puppy she was holding) kiss her wrist and her hand. After we had done so, I looked in her eyes and said, "I'm so sorry about your fingers, honey."

And she said, "But it wasn't your fault, Mommy. It was kind of me who did it."

Thank goodness she understands what an apology is supposed to be. Now if only I can change my ways before she picks up my passive, diluted version thereof.

Twisted Theology

As we sat down to a lunch of reheated Papa Murphy's pizza this afternoon, I reached for the kids' hands to say our prayer. It's a simple one which goes like this:

Come Lord Jesus, be our guest, and let your gifts to us be blessed. Amen.

However, when the kids lead the way, it sounds more like, "Calorjesbeagessanletchorgifstousbeblessamen.

I decided to slow them down a bit after we'd speed-prayed and asked them if they knew what our prayer meant. They looked at me with spoonfuls of applesauce in their mouths and said nothing.

"When we pray, we're asking Jesus to be with us while we eat and for him to bless everything he gives us, including our food," I said.

Our three-year-old responded, "And we can't see him because he's in the wall."

Her brother quickly corrected her. "No, we can't see him because he's dead."

"Yeah," said little sis. "A dead guy in the wall."

Not quite my point, but at least I got them thinking about it.

Nobody's Perfect

When your kids are scrappin' and screamin', there are few tactics as effective as the one I employed earlier this evening to stop their battle in its tracks--bursting into tears.

It had been a rough day, one complete with workplace setbacks and a day care drive-by that made me miserable about not stopping (too time-consuming and/or too difficult for the kids to separate from me a second time in one day, I figured). Plus it's hot today, and I didn't get much sleep last night, what with the wee-hours thunderstorm we had and the frightened little somnabulist it blew into my bed.

Excuses, excuses. I suppose a woman doesn't have to justify treating herself to a little cry once in a while.

The kids didn't like it much. It scares them to see a grown-up lose control. When they asked why I was crying, I told them what I've always told them when I come to tears in their presence: "Mommy's just tired." Then I retreated to my room for a time-out.

A few minutes later, our boy made his way quietly up the stairs and in the door. He came to the side of the bed, where my head was resting on a pillow. "Mommy, you'll have to remember to wake up soon, because it's almost nighttime," he said, touching my cheek gently.

"Mommy's not sleeping, honey. I'm just lying here for a while," I told him. Then I offered up a lesson against self-abuse. "Mommy made some mistakes at work today, and I'm feeling worse about them than I should."

In all his five-year-old wisdom, he said, "Well, a hard day is a hard day. But you shouldn't feel sad. No one is perfect. Not even the person who tells you what to do."

If he can come up with thoughts like that, I must be doing something well. Not perfectly, but well.

Heaps of Love

Last summer, an ice cream parlor and candy store opened in downtown Neenah. They sell the tasty, hard-packed ice cream that's not available at fast-food-style soft-serve outlets, and they also carry an infinite variety of old-fashioned candies--the kinds you remember from when you were a kid, no matter how old you are. For me, the hot dog gum and candy cigarettes are favorites; yours would no doubt be different but equally nostalgic. (Say what you will about candy cigarettes being nostalgic for me.)

We occasionally make a bike trip to this ice cream parlor for a treat. The last time we did, it was a sweltering Saturday afternoon--so sweltering, in fact, that we ate our ice cream inside rather than on the bench out front. (To me, there's nothing better than a drippy ice cream cone eaten in the sun.)

Each of us painstakingly selected our flavor, some of us more painstakingly than others. For our son, it's almost invariably this dark, dark Zanzibar chocolate, a variety too sophisticated for his five-year-old taste, but one he likes nonetheless. Our daughter chose some pink-and-blue concoction, and my beloved went for something kind of fruity...fresh strawberries or raspberries, I think.

I, on the other hand, picked "Heaps of Love," a base of vanilla ice cream bursting with basically everything the makers could cram in...brownies, cookie dough, candied pecans, chocolate chunks. It was the "indecisive" flavor, but it was decidedly good.

We sat down at the only kiddie table in the place. It had a tiny umbrella and two miniscule chairs. Daddy and I sat on the floor.

It's our tradition to trade licks once we have cones in hand, which we proceeded to do. Our boy looked at mine before licking it and said, "What's yours, Mama?"

"It's called 'Heaps of Love,'" I told him. "Try it."

He did. Then he smiled and said, "It tastes like love."

And he was right.

A Million Little Pieces

Summer is upon us, and it's time to be footloose and fancy-free. By footloose, I of course mean "loose of shoes."

Barefoot is the way to be when it's summertime and the livin' is easy. At least that's the way the kids prefer it, even after our youngest stepped on something—possibly the rusty stump of a former fencepost, we're not sure—while playing hide and seek in the further reaches of our small yard. (The prescription for oral antibiotics that the doctor wrote us "just in case" was blown to Timbuktu in Friday's strong winds, but that's another blog post.)

Anyway, I'm known to run around unshod myself some of the time, but I'll tell you what...it's much safer to do so OUTSIDE these days than IN. Because since the tidal wave of two kids' birthdays in eight days hit our house, you need to step with extreme caution around here. Now that he's five, our eldest has graduated to regular Legos, no longer as interested in their easier-to-spot Duplo siblings. There are Playmobil figures and accessories to contend with, too. The crazy Germans that design those things must breed their children to be extremely organized from birth, because I haven't yet found in one of the sets the one accessory I'd find most useful—a tweezers to pluck embedded wrist cuffs or tiny swords from the soles of my feet.

The situation is a bit better with our now three-year-old's stuff. There's no risk of tetanus from a puncture wound inflicted by a puzzle piece or a Little People Person. However, given that those Little People have evolved into beefy, unswallowable beings, there is the chance you'll turn an ankle if you're not watching your step.

Like I've always said after Christmas, it takes me a week to assimilate new inventory into our collection. That leaves me three more days to find homes for our million little pieces.