Few things feel more comfortable, indulgent, and relaxing than closing out a chilly fall day by snuggling into bed and reading a book. Well, maybe “relaxing” isn’t quite accurate when you are joined by your introspective and inquisitive 7 year old who finds a way to turn even a fantastical Roald Dahl book into a deep and existential pop quiz. In order, conducted rapid-fire, and – I assure you – receiving pretty sub-par responses from his mother as her cognitive speed leaves a lot to be desired by 8pm on a school night:
- “Is Roald Dahl still alive?”
- “How old was he when he died?”
- “Do you think he’s in heaven?”
- “What *is* heaven?”
- “Okay. What’s a soul?”
- “Hm… so where does the soul live in my body?”
- (here’s where you can tell my answers were no longer satisfactory to him): “Can you ask Google?”
Maybe tomorrow I’ll suggest I just sing lullabies instead.
Awhile back, I read this guest post on CupofJo.com: 21 Complete Subjective Rules for Raising Teenage Boys. It’s funny and sweet, but strangely enough, one of the tips that I ended up finding most salient is the one I quoted in my title:
Pick your battles. Personal style is a pretty low-stakes form of self-actualization; if the way they wear their hair or jeans (hello, bum crack!) is not your very favorite, complain about it to a friend.
– Catherine Newman
My boys are young and easy-going as clothes go, happy to throw on whatever is on top of their clean clothes stacks in their drawers, and generally acquiescing to my suggestions for length of pants or shirt sleeves per the changing temperatures during Michigan’s fall.
But today, I had to photo-document. Not only did J & O dress themselves in these outfits, but they were, in fact, pleased enough with their selections that they made a point to highlight them to me over breakfast.
Featured on J: Paw Patrol sweatpants, an under tee, Mickey sweatshirt, and a pizza print button-down collared shirt.
Featured on O: a Star Wars tee, his favorite pineapple-wearing-sunglasses button-down shirt, and his speedy light-up shoes.
Personal style. It begins.
Dave was out of town for business travel much of this past week. I’d love to say I kept the train on the tracks despite some of the expected debris, but instead I will be honest:
There were FIVE bodily-function-related accidents of varying degrees of severity – all from ostensibly potty-trained children. I will spare the internet the graphic details, but rest assured, the details were… graphic.
C spiked a fever (for 3 days and counting), was kicked out of daycare, and became a sad, fussy, child-shaped barnacle attached to my body during all waking hours (and parts of the night).
I lost A in the grocery store. Good news: he has figured out the portion of Hide & Seek whereby one does not jump out and yell to reveal their location. Bad news: it went on long enough that staff got involved. Honest assessment: I’m surprised this has not happened sooner. Additional detail: after we found A, Steve the wine guy offered to “put J to work” so I’d only have to watch the remaining 3 as I finished my grocery run. J was very proud to show me all the rows of bottles he had feather-dusted by the time I was ready to hit up the cash register.
I texted my mom “I’m drowning over here; send good vibes” and didn’t even pretend to hesitate accepting help when she texted back “I’ll leave here asap and come over.”
But before we call the entire episode a failure, please remember: the boys were so charming at our post-playground Subway lunch stop on Saturday that the workers gave them all free cookies. So.
^In my defense losing 25% of my offspring, even the largest carts do not satisfactorily accommodate us.
THE “THINGS I NEED TO COMMUNICATE TO MY HUSBAND” EDITION
*****
Me, in a moment of sincere revelation, to Dave: ah, I see. I guess I really misunderstood the sword cane value proposition.
*****
Me, earnestly, to Dave first thing in the morning: don’t touch that shirt on the ground; it’s all wet from when A fell in the toilet.
*****
Me, sadly: that’s the empty jelly jar from when I spilled this morning. I wasted probably 80% of it.
Dave: aw, I’m sorry, Babe. But at least it’s not the worst spill we had this morning. Actually it’s probably a distant third after the entire box of pasta and all the water.
*****
Related: Overheard: is there any amount of context that would make this make sense?
I got my second speeding ticket of my life over the weekend. By way of explanation, there were two things happening at once, making it almost unavoidable that I would of course be speeding:
- On a relatively rural section of highway that expands into designated “passing lanes” periodically to break up traffic, I was hustling to pass a slow section of cars before the lanes narrowed back to one for the next many miles. There was a speed trap set up at the far end, likely catching my speed just as I would have maxed out at the front of the line.
- J, O, and I were loudly jamming out to Jack Hartmann’s Days of the Week Rap Back. I challenge anyone with kids in the car to not inadvertently add a few MPH while singing along with this banger.
This is my life now. A little bit of danger, and a lot of strongly formed opinions about kids’ tunes.
Related: speaking of mom-level danger… // Jack Hartmann and I have a storied history together.
Tuesday marks the first day of school for both J & O.
I have a dining room table full of school supplies that are mismatched and disorganized as neither of my two attempts at brick-&-mortar shopping nor my attempted Amazon prime deliveries yielded the full list of requested supplies and donations for their classrooms. Things need to be divided, labeled, bagged up.
I have a long grocery list of dinner and packed lunch supplies to pick up tomorrow, now complicated by a weekend email that indicated our intended entree for O (PB&J) as well as the preferred fruit (strawberries) are associated with severe allergies for children in his class, and therefore barred from entry.
Until just a few nights ago, I had a stack of papers still left over from J’s end of Kindergarten events, which warranted being reviewed, tossed, or saved in the filing folder system I’m hoping will be somewhat sustainable as the boys age and accrue what I can only assume will be exorbitant amounts of priceless and sentimental intellectual property (says their mother).
And then there is this looming dread of operating by a new set of logistics. Even summer mornings are a bit much, and now we will have 2 that have to be walking out to the bus at 7:43am. They will need to be picked up from the after care program at school on the south side of town before 6pm. A and C have daycare on the east side of town, flexible in start time but also needing a pickup by 6pm. I drive by the daycare on my way to the highway and on my way home, but my meetings start no later than 9am, which means I could take the littles in if I can get there by 7:45 to be on the road by 8, but then I miss the bus stop, which is a 10 minute window of my morning that I genuinely love. Either way, Dave and I need to predetermine who takes what car and picks up which set of boys each day as the car seat configuration is anything but flexible. We are 30 hours out from go-time and have yet to devote the brain space to figure this out.
So when Dave asked me if I wanted to steal away for the long weekend up north, I said ‘no.’ Too much to do, and there was no chance I’d be in a good head space Monday night if I was behind the 8 ball just prior to the first day of 1st grade and Junior Kindergarten. No. No, thank you, but no.
He made his case simply: “the boys are about to start school again. We won’t have that many occasions when we can all get away together for the next many months. If we can make it work, I feel like we should.”
Partially because Dave asks next to nothing of me and therefore I try to oblige when he does, and partially because I knew he was objectively right, I agreed. We went up north.
But as I’ve observed many times before yet clearly not fully internalized, it is not simply about a change of scenery. Rather, it’s about the active choice to step away from the to do list and obligations that otherwise spur many of the decisions of how we spend our time. In the list of things we did, none of them are unique to being away from home. In fact, this entire list could have been written in a regular weekend less than 10 minutes from home. During this weekend, we:
- – Did a grocery run.
- – Played hide and seek at a playground and among the trees.
- – Went bowling.
- – Moderated brotherly squabbles roughly 30x/day.
- – Let the older bros stay up too late with the acknowledgment we will pay for this during the coming school week.
Because we were “away” (physically, but also mentally from the mental ticker tape of things we should be dividing in order to conquer), however, both Dave & I experienced these commonplace things like this:
- – Grocery run – the first time the boys visited a store with the kid-sized carts and how unbelievably excited they were to help! We ended up with 3 versions of granola bars when every boy insisted on picking their own flavor.
- – Hide and Seek – A is still evidently unclear on rules and – when you announce ‘ready or not, here I come!’ – he will pop out from his hiding spot behind a tree, shrieking “I FOUND YOU!” It made me laugh every. single. time. Plus we meandered over to the nearby skate park, only to realize it was overrun with kids no older than 12 who were zipping around on their scooters. J watched, mesmerized, and a new hobby was born (radiologists all over the country are now shuddering as another little boy increases his odds of needing an X-ray).
- – Bowling – our first time with the boys, and we had no idea how fun this would be when you throw in bumpers and the ramp tools they have ready for kids — to say nothing of the “glow” environment even at 12pm. We had a delicious lunch of greasy bar food, I only barely won (yes, also utilizing bumpers), and the boys were asking to go back the very next day.
- – Brotherly squabbles – no romanticizing this; it’s just the nature of the beast in our home.
- – Staying up late – because who is going to call it a night when their children are animatedly running down the beach trying to find the best stones to skip, or finally getting the hang of a game of Frisbee with their dad, or laughing raucously at whatever 3 x small children find so funny long after lights-out at bedtime?
It shouldn’t require physical space to get to this point of mental clarity and appreciation for how beautiful the every day can be, but for me, it certainly helps.
I know this to be true: routine is huge for me at this stage in life. Routine allows me to operate on auto-pilot while my mind is trying to track 3 steps ahead of whatever we all need. Routine allows me to delegate effectively when I need to tap out or ask for help. Routine allows me to compartmentalize and keep the train in motion — for my self, and for my family. I love — I mean, love — a solid, predictable, effective routine.
But routines are not memorable. Memories stem from the stand-out moments, whether those are truly extraordinary moments, or moments within the realm of the ordinary, but with extra attention paid. This weekend was all about the latter: ordinary moments with extraordinary attention paid.
I’m still behind on back-to-school prep, but I have a feeling when I look back, I’ll remember J’s first strike bowling, and not the fact that I didn’t have his spare gym shoes ready and labeled before his first day.
Related: the trick to quality time that I picked up from my mom // the bus stop: my parental focus group
A colleague and I were recently laughing about how enviously we watch as a mutual friend gallivants through life without children. The travel to remote and beautiful places! The indulgent, involved meals! The copious hobbies and “because I can” experiences like snowmobiling to and from Mackinac Island when Lake Huron freezes over!
I feigned defensiveness of our life’s choices: okay fine, but can he tell you which playground has the best shade cover for a sunny summer day? Where all of the tornado sirens are within a 10 mile radius of his home? How many of the trucks at the local fire station are red and how many are yellow? Because I can!
Jokes aside, one of my favorite unexpected side effects of having kids is that they cause you to slow down and appreciate the vibrancy and color of life happening right beside you. The “stop and smell the roses” life philosophy was probably penned by someone whose child brought them a dandelion bouquet on every walk they took around their home.
Today, for instance, A and I were on our weekly grocery run which involves him making key selections in our cart (always the car cart), cereal (sometimes Kix, sometimes Wheaties), and yogurt (doesn’t matter the flavor, just clear out the inventory). Heading into the store through the parking lot today, his hand clasped in mine and walking about a half pace behind me, he gently pulled me to stop so we could admire something.
“That is such a beautiful shape, Mom!”
“What?” I asked, looking inquisitively at my son.
“That’s such a beautiful shape!”
“Such a beautiful… what?” I scanned the sky for… a sail? A plane? A bird? I looked at the nearby cars: any standout colors or silhouettes?
“Right there,” he pointed down at the pavement.
A patchwork in a parking lot, creating a near-perfect square. I’ve probably walked over this square a hundred times and never noticed, but to my 3-year-old son learning his shapes, it is remarkable in the dictionary definition of the word: worthy of attention.
I couldn’t help myself snapping a picture, and we loitered near this “beautiful shape,” chatting about squares for another 15 seconds before continuing on our way.
There is no moral imperative implicit in this anecdote. This is not to say that snowmobiling across a massive body of frozen water is better or worse than knowing the precise number of hydrangea blooms in your corner shrub (it’s just 5, and they are fading fast as we enter the late summer).
Rather, this is a testament to the wonder and beauty of the world both near and far.
If you ever find yourself unable to see things in that way, just find a small child to borrow for an outing and pay attention to the way your everyday becomes extraordinary.
Suffice it to say, I will probably never look at my grocery store’s parking lot the same way again.
Related: different son, same fandom for (literally) every day occurrences // other simple joys.
- Catatumbo lightning. Gives the Northern Lights a run for their money.
- The flick I am recommending to everyone I know for their next family movie night. Laugh out loud funny for all ages.
- Passive aggressive work emails from a toddler.
- Would it surprise you to know that Darth Vader does not reveal his paternity to Luke Skywalker by saying “Luke, I am your father”? If so, meet the Mandela effect.
