Does this look good?

It started with a whiff of a sassy tude and the request to download Selena Gomez songs to her iPod. Next there was some squinting at the mirror, some swiveling to examine the outfit. Then she started asking - does this look good?

This morning she was taking forever in the bathroom and I went upstairs to find her meticulously applying lipgloss.

Does this look good?

No baby, it doesn't. I mean, you do, of course.

But this? This growing up thing?

Not good at all.

Got dignity?

Girlie's artwork was chosen to be on display in our city's school offices and this week they had a small reception for the show.

Turns out Girlie's work was actually on display in the Superintendent's office. It was an amazing self-portrait done in pastels.

Before we even got there, Little Guy was on a tear, so I really should have known what was coming.

At the reception, he had the manic energy, what I call the rips. He ran away from me, grabbed things he wasn't supposed to touch, wouldn't listen to anything. At one point he plopped down in the Superintendent's chair and started riffling through the guy's desk. Under any other circumstance, I would have whisked him outside to the car, but this was supposed to be something nice for Girlie, about Girlie, so I picked him up, bribed him with a cookie, and left Girlie to chat with her art teacher.

A few minutes later we returned and Mr. Superintendent himself is in the office. As I am introducing myself, Little Guy spots a basketball on his shelf, likely some signed Celtics memorabilia. He starts squirming to get to it while I'm holding on to him for dear life.

Then Little Guy sort of whacks me in the head pretty hard. Mr. Superintendent is still commenting on the artwork, but clearly he sees me getting throttled by the three year old. In his office.

We do leave then, by the time we get to the car it only gets worse, but I'll spare you the details, and frankly I'd like to block them from my memory.

So, rationally, I can see what happened here. Little Guy had been at preschool all day (where his teacher reported that he'd had a great day, seriously?). I picked him up, ran a few short errands, and came home. As soon as Girlie got home we headed for the car.

Little Guy needed to burn off some energy before we went inside again. He'd been at preschool all day exhibiting model behavior and he'd had enough. I get it.

That night I couldn't recover. After dinner, I yelled at Little Guy, Girlie, Hubs. The dog.

At one point, Hubs pulls me into the living room and in his voice for crazy people he asks if I can think of a way I might approach things differently. I eyeball the fireplace tools and consider whacking him with them. Suddenly I'm the three year old.

It was that kind of day.

Stage Mother

So not to be a stage Mother or anything, but my daughter is writing a book.

For the last few weeks I've been giving myself permission to be really serious about writing without feeling silly about it. I have rearranged my schedule and my thinking to really give the work a priority space in my life.

A huge step in this is how I handle the family priorities. I no longer run errands while Little Guy is in preschool, those are my work days. I make the kids wait until 7 AM for breakfast instead of abandoning my laptop as soon as they're up (I know, flagrant neglect, please don't report me). If I am working on something during the day, I tell them they'll have to wait a few minutes to have my attention because I need to finish my writing. I actively ignore the laundry (okay, maybe I did that before, but now I do it with purpose).

And though it will take some time to really kick this thing to the next level, I feel like I am on the right track. Writing is no longer, in my mind at least, a hobby.

So the kids are soaking it in, maybe more than I realized. A few days ago, Girlie spent her entire computer screen time writing a story. She says wants to be a writer. She even wrote an essay about it at school. She wrote, get this, that I am her inspiration.

I was thinking that over the weekend, I'd take her to a coffee shop where we could hang out and be writers together. I already gave her some feedback on the her story - focus on the conflict, get to it sooner, the story behind the story, etc. Chances are that she'll want to be a million other things before she lands on it, but right now I am going to enjoy this thing, hers and mine. She's nine, so next week she could want to be a chef or a lawyer or one of Katy Perry's backup singers.

But as for the writing thing, maybe she's got a shot at it. Her book seems to be coming along much faster than mine.

Lockdown

Girlie came home yesterday and mentioned that there had been a lockdown at her school. She told me this over lunch and only after I asked how her day had been, a good twenty minutes after she arrived.

Apparently, the bank down the street had been robbed and the guy escaped on foot into the neighborhood. While no one at the bank saw a weapon, the man said that he had one. The school is less than a mile from my house, and just a block from the bank, so the police contacted the school and the staff was told to issue a lockdown. The doors were locked, blinds pulled, and the kids had to sit along the wall, away from the doors.

I asked Girlie how it all went down. She said the principal made the announcement over the intercom system, stating that the request was not a drill. She said her teachers were very calm and the students had been quiet and orderly. She said she wasn't really scared.

At the end of the story she shrugged and said "It's not like anything could happen."

I ate my sandwich and let her believe that.

Nine is just fine!

My gal turns nine today. Nine!

Could I freeze her right here?

Eight is enough

Girlie is at the perfect age. If I could figure out a way to freeze her at 8, I might be tempted to do it. The spot-on commentary,the endless supply of positive energy, the gaps in her smile where the teeth are missing, the hair long and natural and curling at the ends, the snarky but not too snarky sense of humor. Last week , she finally learned to turn a cartwheel at gymnastics. She's fantastic really.

I read to both of the kids every night before bed. Since Girlie likes older books (we're halfway through the Narnia series), I read to them individually. More often than not, Hubs is out of town and by the time I get to her, I have wrestled Little Guy through the dinner, bath, PJs, teeth, books, bed thing and I am completely exhausted.

On my way to her room at night, I almost always wish I could skip reading to her. She's old enough to shower, jump into PJ's, and do the whole routine herself. She can read to herself too, and often does. So I almost always think about bagging on the book time and heading for the couch to spend a little time with Don Draper and a brimming glass of cabernet. But then, I get to her room and there she is with that little gappish smile and I can't. I don't.

Sometimes we talk after the books. Last night she told me about a boy in her class. She's not old enough to like any of them yet, but this guy sits at her lunch table and she says he's pretty nice. What makes him nice I ask? She tells me that he's a good listener, you know, for a boy. I tell her I do know.

Can we just stick with eight?

Hey mister, want to buy a box of cookies?

I've been really grumpy this weekend, like there is something hanging over my head, undone, but I can't quit put my finger on it. We've been on a quest to clean out the office, so the shredfest has been going on for several days and bulk trash pickup is on Monday so there's the stuff we're pulling out of the garage to get rid of. But neither of those was it.

And then I remembered, Girl Scout cookie orders are due this Wednesday.

I can't stand cookie season. The sale is supposed to be a learning experience for the girls, to teach them self confidence or working towards a goal or some crap like that, while raising money for the organization. Of course, the girls are responsible for selling the cookies, but we all know who really sells them.

When I was a Girl Scout, my father was the nightshift nursing supervisor at a hospital and he sold so many boxes that my entire troop went to Six Flags two years in a row. So compared to my Dad, my salesmanship is pretty lame.

Since I don't work in an office and Hubs has all of five people in his office, neither of us can count on our jobs to get rid of very many. Which means we're forced to hit the streets. Today, we'll traipse the neighborhood trying to sell a few more boxes. Girlie hopes to sell 80 boxes so she'll earn some dollar store panda from the incentive catalog, but we'll probably land somewhere closer to thirty boxes.

I'm pretty sure my Dad, I mean, I sold three hundred boxes.

Midnight joker

So I have a minivan. And it's full of cracker bits and discarded juice cups and all kinds of orphaned toys. Right now, there is a small pile of dirt in the back where a poinsettia tipped over on the way back from a grocery store. There also a can of spray paint rolling around because I've been planning to return it but keep forgetting to.

Yes, I drive the dirty minivan. Pretty much the mom jeans equivalent in transportation and it is beyond dorky.

But I draw the line at listening to kids music, so we listen to the radio or the mixed CD's my pals have made. I'm not great about keeping up with music and I don't have an IPod, so I love it when someone sends me some music.

The CD's are really good, usually a mix of things like Vampire Weekend and The Ting Tings. From my gal pal in B'more, a little Akon thrown in. And my friend from college in the ATL included some old Steve Miller Band.

Which is how I found myself explaining what a "midnight toker" is to Girlie the other day.

"Did they say that? I thought it was "midnight joker," I say, as I smoothly switch to the next song.

Same thing really.

Hung by the chimney with care

I started decking the halls yesterday. Every year as I hang Little Guy's stocking, the felty snowman one, I think about how close we came to only having one child. When I was pregnant with Girlie, I picked out the Santa stocking from the Martha Stewart collection. I decided to pick up the snowman so we'd have a matching set for our second child.

After Girlie was born, I was certain I wouldn't have another baby. It wasn't the pregnancy or the birth, I had a pretty easy time with both. But taking care of a baby and raising a little person was completely overwhelming. And what a shock that was. I had been, up until that point, a multitasking overachiever. I don't think I had really ever experienced overwhelmed. But there I was. So I told Hubs, really, this was great, but we're not doing it again. And for five years I stuck to it.

But still, I held on to the extra stocking tucking it into the box where we store our holiday stuff. I didn't think we'd ever use it, but I didn't get rid of it either. Then, after five years and a huge change of heart, Little Guy was born and the snowman stocking finally found a purpose.

Mini me

Girlie has never been one to transition into new situations readily. As a toddler, she would stand at the edge of the playground watching all of the other kids play and if there was too much activity, as in get these crazy two year olds away from me with the shrieking and the running, it would send her over the edge and we'd have to leave pronto. When she started preschool she cried every time I dropped her off. She was also the only kid who cried when I picked her up. At age four, I took her to the Curious George movie, her first, and we had to ditch the movie after only fifteen minutes because she started crying when the monkey got separated from the man with the yellow hat. I assured her that he found the monkey eventually, reminded her that she'd seen the PBS shows, but nope. She was almost five years old before she set foot in a bouncy castle. The bouncing! The screaming! How could that be fun? She is seven now and isn't nearly as sensitive, but unfamiliar situations can throw her a little. She thrives on predictability and order.

From the moment she was born I think I have always identified myself with her. People say she looks just like me, a mini-me, and at one point we even kind of had the same haircut. So whenever this stuff comes up, I blame myself. I worry that I have passed my own crazy control issues on to her. Which is silly, of course, because she is part me, part Hubs, and a little bit of that magic that makes us each unique individuals. She is no more a miniature version of me, than I am of my mother. And I am so not my mother.

So a few weeks ago, the Girl Scouts had a backyard camp out and I knew she wouldn't be into it. I asked several times, and she considered it, but then said no. She agreed to go for the evening, but then she wanted to come home. I decided not to push it. I was heading out of town so I couldn't go with her and if she did go and then have a change of mind, Hubs would have to get Little Guy out of bed to pick her up.

Last night we were talking about Girl Scouts and the pre-campout fun and I asked her again why she didn't want to go. I reminded her that we had all been camping a few months ago and she'd loved it.

She said she didn't want to stay overnight because camping in someone's back yard was just weird. Why would she camp in a yard when she could just come home and get in her bed where she knew she'd be comfortable? She has a point.

Smart girl. Maybe exactly like me.

Pjs, pancakes, and pumpkins

Today I am feeling pretty good. Despite the fact that I am supposed to be on a plane to California this morning. Despite the fact that I got a ticket last night on the way home from writing class. Despite the fact that the situation I am heading for back home is going to be pretty tough. I feel okay.

Since I am going to miss trick or treating, I decided to make today all about hanging out with the kids. This morning, they are pretty irresistible. It was cold last night, and Hubs had them both in footie Pjs. They hung out watching cartoons while I made blueberry pancakes.

The cool weather is hanging around, and later this morning we are heading to a pumpkin patch. On the way home, we'll stop somewhere and try to find a copy of It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. And I am hoping to coax Hubs home from work a little early to carve our pumpkins.

Today is one of those days when it is so easy to see that I am a lucky lucky girl.

Pjs, pancakes, and pumpkins.

Art appreciation

So today I am heading to Girlies school to do an art presentation. I volunteer with a program to supplement art education in the classroom. Because of the budget cuts, the kids only get a half year of art class, so the rest of the time a small group of parents fill in on a rotating basis. We present a famous piece of art, talk about the artist, and do a project. Pretty simple stuff.

The thing is, I am not an artist, not that familiar with art history, and a little intimidated by the prospect of grabbing the attention of an entire class of second graders. Give me a room full of adults any day, but little people? They scare me. But I do it, because I feel very strongly that art is an important part of developing a whole person. The program is pretty organized and the school provides most of the materials. While it is art, and I am the type who can barely draw a stick figure, we are talking elementary school art, so I think I can handle it.

We're looking at Van Gogh's The Starry Night. I will talk about the painting, and Van Gogh himself, and then another mother will lead a related art project. I decided to make star shaped sugar cookies, because every kid loves a cookie, and if my presentation is a little boring I'll just whip a cookie out. Hey, kid! Look, a cookie! Anyway, I am working on the cookies and reading over the materials when Girlie mentions that they will be having a substitute teacher the day of my presentation.

And that the substitute is last year's art teacher, Mr. B.

Fabulous.

Then I called the other mother to confirm the head count and found out that we are combining classes. So I'll have sixty kids instead of thirty.

Outstanding.

Which is why I am up at 5 AM to bake a second batch of star cookies. For sixty kids. And preparing to impersonate the art teacher. While he watches.

Maybe I should have just volunteered to correct the spelling tests.

A happy camper

Hubs and I took the kids camping in Northern Arizona this weekend and it was actually pretty fun. The trip was organized by some of the parents from Girlie's class.

I am not the most outdoorsy gal, but I do find it pretty relaxing to be outside. The weather was perfect, sunny and 70's during the day, and mid-30's at night. We were prepared for both, so the dip in temperatures wasn't a problem, and it was nice to hang around a fire first thing in the morning, drinking my coffee. Despite the howling coyotes, and a couple of rednecks, I even managed to get some pretty decent sleep, the second night anyway.

Little Guy was a big challenge, but we worked around it as best we could, mostly by alternating who was in charge of chasing him. Girlie was in heaven, running around with her pals from school, finding secret hide-outs in the woods, and munching sandwiches with dusty hands. Both kids were able to embrace a certain free roaming wildness that cannot be achieved elsewhere. Hubs got to do some man stuff, chopping wood by hand and dragging rocks into a circle for our fire pit.

As for me, I think there is something about camping that speaks to my competitive side; me against nature, with me coming out mostly on top, scrambling eggs and sausage on my Coleman stove, boiling water on the fire, determined to make a strong cup of coffee no matter what.

Still, with that said, maybe the best part of camping is how much it makes you appreciate the comforts of home. No shower was more cleansing, no dinner more delicious, and no bed more comfortable, than the ones from our first night back.

New math

Did you know that 1 + 1 = 10?

This week having two kids is kicking my butt a little. The worst of it seems to be just before dinner, when I am trying to help Girlie with her homework, and Little Guy is acting like a total two year old.

I know I should be able to guide her through second grade math, but my late-in-the-day foggy brain has a hard time focusing. There is the dinner which is probably seconds away from burning on the stove. The little boy who is determined to run circles around it all. The girl who just needs five seconds of my attention. And me, struggling to understand what the "right side rule" is referring to on her math homework. Add all of that up, and you get what I like to call the insanity hour.

When we had our kids five years apart, I thought I had it all figured out. That it would be easier to juggle them because of the age difference.

Then again I have always been a little stumped by long division.

Laugh track

I have noticed that my kids laugh way more than I do.

I have a sense of humor, but I definitely lean more towards the serious. And while I might smile or even chuckle a little, I think there are times when I make it through the entire day without laughing, really laughing, even once.

So I have been trying to let go a little and give in the giggles.

And really, if I am open minded about it, there is so much to laugh about around here.

Kickin' it old school

Check out this fantastic set of lockers I scored off craigslist for our office and art room.

It was dirt cheap and solved a ton of storage issues. I have compartments for all of my office things and individual nooks for all of Girlie's craft supplies. She has a place to hang her backpack, and somewhere to keep her Girl Scout stuff between meetings. Best of all, I can put locks in on the sections that I need to keep Little Guy out of.

And when Hubs asks me where the business sized envelopes are? I'm all, behind door number seven baby.

He usually waits until I turn around before rolling his eyes.

Nine Eleven

The day the towers fell coincided with my first doctors appointment after I found out I was pregnant with Girlie. I was seven weeks along at that point and still pretty nervous. I knew I was pregnant, but nothing about me had really changed yet and it just didn't seem real.

My appointment wasn't until 10:30 AM so I had been lingering over my morning coffee watching the end of the Today Show when the news broke. I wasn't dressed yet and I sat there glued to the couch until I finally had scramble to get dressed and dash out of the house with barely enough time to make it to the office.

It turned out that the doctors office decided to cancel the remaining appointments for the day, and I was the last patient to be seen before they closed the office. It was all anyone could talk about, the doctors, the nurses, the receptionist. We all watched the news as the nurse checked my blood pressure, as I stepped on a scale, as I had blood taken, as I was shown to the examining room. It was impossible to believe that those two enormous buildings had disappeared, and yet, there it was.

Finally, I left the office, with a prescription for prenatal vitamins and some fuzzy pictures of a tiny blob growing inside me. The pregnancy was real.

The devastation was real too. And even harder to comprehend.

Learning about discipline

We've been having trouble with backtalk from the seven year old girl. I haven't really taken it seriously and lately I have noticed that it seems to be getting worse. I'm a little at a loss for how to approach it, so I picked up a little expert reading on the topic.

The fix seems easy enough. Swift and consistent response, no tolerance for it, sticking to your guns, etc.

Until I got to the part where I am not supposed to have a reaction.

Uh-oh.

Life is a shake of cherries

Yesterday we took the kids for a hike in Payson, Arizona. We couldn't afford a weekend away since we're saving for a big trip to southern Utah in October, so we decided to take a day trip. It felt fantastic to get out of the heat in Phoenix for the day and the hike was pretty nice, despite Girlie's frequent protests that it was too hot, too long, and her legs were hurting. I might have felt a little sorrier for her, but the litany of complaints started about 100 feet into the hike.

Little Guy wasn't complaining since he spent most of the time in a pack on Hubs' back. We all managed to push through it and Girlie picked up the pace once we reminded her that the faster she went, the quicker the whole thing would be over. The hike was 2.7 miles, ranked as moderate, and had a few tricky places. I was pretty proud of Girlie for making it, though we played down the difficulty the entire time. At the end, she collapsed to the ground and declared that she couldn't make it the final five feet to our car.

Ah, the drama. I have no idea where she gets it.

On the way home, we stopped at a dive called the Beeline Cafe for burgers, fries, and cherry shakes. The food was delicious and the run down restaurant might just be the best kept secret in Payson. Over patty melts, Hubs asked me to rank the hike on a scale of 1 to 5. It was hard to separate the overall experience from the amount of "coaching" we did to complete it, but I told him I would give it a 3. Just as we were leaving the restaurant, Girlie told our waitress that the food was the best meal she had ever eaten. She grabbed my hand and said it was the best day ever.

And that is just how it goes with kids. You struggle to rank the experience by the mile or the hour. But, occasionally you order a cherry shake and the whole thing seems like a 5 out of 5.

Not so sharp

I attended a Parent Teacher Group meeting at Girlie's school last night. The group is made up of a shockingly small, but dedicated set of mothers and teachers. When I pulled into the parking lot and noticed how few cars were there, I thought I might have gotten the date wrong or shown up too early. Or too late, like I did on curriculum night. But that's another story.

Hubs and I made the decision to put Girlie in public school when we moved to Phoenix. In Georgia, we had her in a fantastic private school, but we practically had to sell non essential organs to pay for it. Since the school system here has an open enrollment policy, we were able to hand pick her elementary school and I feel like we made the right choice. This year there have been so many budget cuts that the school has to be really creative with money. The PTG plays a big role in getting extras for the school, so I figured that I should volunteer.

The meeting went fairly well until it digressed into a 15 minute debate over an industrial pencil sharpener. Both sides had good points, (pun intended) but for some reason they felt the need to repeat themselves, as though saying the same thing multiple times would suddenly change things. After a few minutes of it, I stole a glance at my girlfriend who wasn't making eye contact because she was busy trying to check her watch. Finally, the group moved on and I managed to sign up to help with a few things.



Unfortunately, the sharpener discussion needs more research and will be brought up at the next meeting.

We'll take it year by year, but for now I still feel like we made the right choice to go with public school. Still, last night I really missed the pretentious privilege of private school, where someone would have whipped out a checkbook and scribbled out a personal check for ten industrial sharpeners, just to end the discussion.