cat named pig

In which I reveal my idiocy for your entertainment. Once again.

I realize it’s only Wednesday, so of course, there’s still plenty of time for bigger, more dramatic parenting FAILS, but the last couple days have just been a little off. Witness:

1.  Sending a whole apple to school for snack for a child with one missing tooth and one loose one.

2.  Giving same child stern lecture on need to keep better track of personal possessions (i.e. brand new mittens) while at school, only to reach into backpack and pull out missing mitten.

3.  Leaving small child’s extremely wet and messy handprint turkey at Spanish class. I am actually OK with this one, given the aforementioned wet-and-messiness, but he will be upset when he realizes it.

4.  Asking child’s Spanish teacher, in Spanish, if there is a place to change diapers. Except I say “handkerchiefs” instead of “diapers.” And, as I’m asking, I reflexively use the baby sign-language sign for “change diaper handkerchief” because I think it is somehow helping me communicate. (Note to self: It’s not. And you look like an idiot.)

5.  Falling, once again, for the fallacy that sunny skies automatically equal a warm day. Failing to dress anyone adequately for leaving the house, and failing to leave enough time to scrape frost off windshield, making us almost late to the Spanish Class of Forgetfulness and Humiliation. STUPID WEATHER. You continue to mess with me.

There are more, there are always more, but the small child is awake from his nap now and I have to go try not to screw up getting his snack and changing his handkerchief diaper.

Because I am in a great mood, here’s a little Sunday night round-up of things that fall solidly in the plus column:

• It’s officially Chili Season — a bigger deal to me than Football Season, although they definitely overlap and both go well with beer. We kicked the season off this year with the classic vegetarian chili recipe we’ve made so often we can do it without thinking. Or while watching football, as Matt did this weekend. (I would argue that’s the same as not thinking; he might disagree.) Sunday nights and one other meal a week are now accounted for, from now until spring — wahoo!
• It’s also (duh) Pumpkin Season — I made these on Friday night and they’re almost gone. And if I’m honest? I’m totally having one for breakfast in the morning. (For lunch I’m eating the leftover cream cheese frosting with a spoon.)
• Sara and Avery were in town from South Dakota, and the girls didn’t even destroy anything while Sara and I sat around and talked about foods that taste good. We also enjoyed a pumpkin ale, because, you know, ’tis the season.
• This weekend we went to: the farmers’ market, Trader Joe’s, and Rainbow Foods. We are ALL SET, grocery-wise. We won’t need to leave our house for a month. Which is fine, since it’s supposed to snow again soon. And that cuts my will to leave the house in half every time.
• In a burst of Martha-esque inspiration, I threw my customary laziness to the wind and worked on our holiday cards for this year. IN OCTOBER. We might just send them out BEFORE the holidays this year, instead of just pretending they were supposed to be “New Year’s Cards.”

Wow, this is a fairly boring list that in no way justifies how happy I feel right now. I think this sudden joie de vivre is mostly due to the fact that I was sick earlier in the week and then a miracle took place and now I AM NO LONGER SICK. I CAN DO ANYTHING. (If you read this blog last winter at all, during the Great and Tedious Chronicling of Minor Unwellness, you might understand why the simple fact of recovering from a cold feels miraculous. I AM HEALED!)

(Whoa. Calm down there, Self.)

Here are some pictures of kids with pumpkins. Happy mid-October!

I feel like I fell asleep in mid-July, woke up long enough to hit “snooze” in early August, blinked, rubbed my eyes, and now it’s almost October. In other words, whoa. Slow down there, Time.

On the other hand, I’m surprised how quickly we’ve settled into our new fall routine — it feels like we’ve been doing the whole elementary school thing for much longer than three weeks. Siena loves kindergarten, which we expected, but she also gets herself ready every morning without any coaxing, hand-wringing or muttered cursing on my part, which no one expected. For the first time in our lives — and for once I am not exaggerating — we seem to be consistently getting out the door on time and on speaking terms with each other. Preschool last year, though only three days a week, was much more challenging in this regard.

So I spend my days alternately shaking my head in bewilderment at how summer can be over already and crossing my fingers that the mornings continue to go this smoothly, that we’re not just experiencing a “honeymoon period” where everything to do with school is great and easy.

Meanwhile, Siena and Elliot continue to grapple with the notion of time in their own ways.

Elliot wakes up every morning (earlier and earlier, I might add, which makes no sense when you consider that the sun is rising later and later) and announces, “I wake up at TEN MINUTES again.” We don’t know whether he means after ten minutes, or that he slept for ten hours, or that he’s been awake for ten minutes already and WHERE’S MY CEE-YAY-YUL? But he is emphatic and consistent enough with this phrase that now we just respond, “Oh, you woke up at ten minutes again, huh? Well, how about some cereal?” and that seems to go over pretty well.

Siena actually has a pretty realistic sense of what time of day things take place, what day of the week it is, and even how long it will be until something happens. Sometimes. Other times, her flair for drama interferes with her ability to comprehend. Or to be more accurate, she chooses drama over comprehension, because the drama is, I don’t know, louder.

For example, the following conversation takes place in some form several times a day:

“Mama, when are we going to [insert any fun thing here -- visit Avery in South Dakota/see Beauty and the Beast the musical/get my driver's license/eat candy, etc.]?”

“Well, today [is Wednesday/is in September/you are five/it's not even dinner time yet] and you’ll do that [next weekend/around Christmas time/when you're sixteen/maybe for dessert], so, you know, not right this second.”

“WHAT?!?! You mean I’m NEVER going to [see Avery EVER AGAIN/see a musical EVER/drive a car EVER in my LIFE/eat candy EVER AGAIN]?!?!? This is TERRIBLE!!!”

“Yes. That’s exactly what I said.”

*Sigh.*

I got a pay check on Friday (!) and, since it’s been a while since that happened, I was pretty excited. I think Matt was too; he even took a picture of me holding it. (If only it had been one of those giant novelty checks — that would have made for a better picture.)

Matt was a little less excited about what I told him next.

“We bought Elliot’s Halloween costume today. He picked it out, and it was on sale so I just bought it.”

[Eye roll. Matt is allergic to buying stuff.]

“Don’t you want to see what it is?”

[Shrugging.] “Sure.”

I reached into the bag and pulled out. . . a giant, puffy chicken costume.

“What? I told you he picked it out!”

“And you actually bought it?”

I think he has some concerns about how I’m going to spend the rest of that check.

[Photo kindly taken and e-mailed to me by Old Navy Store Manager, who was either a) just overwhelmed with the hilarious cuteness of it all, or b) attempting to capture my e-mail address in order to bombard me with SPECIAL OFFERS! and GREAT DEALS! Either way, I'm cool. This image will warm my heart for years to come, particularly when Elliot pretends not to know me as I take him shopping for an outfit to wear to a junior high dance.]

For our first anniversary, Matt and I spent the weekend at a bed-and-breakfast outside Madison. The year after that, we flew to Montreal and stayed in a charming hotel with a fabulous restaurant. We don’t do gifts, but every year since Siena was born we’ve gotten a babysitter and gone out to dinner.

Yesterday Matt and I celebrated our eighth wedding anniversary, but I use the term “celebrated” loosely here. “Briefly acknowledged it” might be more accurate, or even “survived it.” Not that the anniversary of our marriage required surviving, but the day itself sort of did.

We spent the weekend in Portland, OR, for my cousin’s wedding. The whole weekend was all kinds of fantastic, from the gorgeous hotel (stay here if you’re visiting Portland and like Mad Men), to the beautiful vineyard wedding, to the free public transportation in downtown Portland. Seriously, riding the street car and light rail made the trip for Elliot. We visited with family and checked out Powell’s Books, which you should also do if you’re in Portland (and have a spare suitcase to fill). We had a blast.

But then we had to get home.

Due to a staggering lapse in judgment and common sense, we had originally booked our flights without bothering to check Siena’s school calendar. You know, the calendar for the elementary school she is attending for the very first time ever, kind of a big deal, major life milestone, etc. Brilliant. So we had tickets to fly out on her first day of kindergarten. This obviously had to be fixed, which turned out to cost approximately the GDP of a small country. We ended up just changing Siena’s and my tickets. This meant Matt and Elliot left a day earlier and got home a day later than Siena and I did, and hooo-boy was that ever a mistake. If I had known what the emotional fallout of that decision would be like, I would have sold my house and all my belongings to avoid the hours of drama from Siena about the unfairness of it all.

She and I got home Monday night and I put her to bed around 8:00. At 11:00 p.m. she was still coming out of her room, alternately sobbing about missing the boys or raging about how they got a longer vacation and it WASN’T FAIR. Which it wasn’t. At that point, I certainly would have preferred still being on vacation to three hours of histrionics at home.

She finally went to sleep and slept later than she ever has in her life. I took her to the bus stop in the morning and then sent Matt a romantic and loving three-word text message to mark our eight years of wedded bliss. Then I went home and cleaned the litter box.

We picked Matt and Elliot up around bedtime, which meant Siena was even more tired and grumpy by the time we got home from the airport. She was thrilled to see Elliot though, and hug-wrestled him for about fifteen minutes before I pulled them apart. She had missed Matt, too, but chose to express it by being angry at him for being gone. They got into a battle of wills over pajamas that you could probably hear at your house. Or in space.

In the midst of all this, the toilet overflowed. (Never buy the extra-thick toilet paper if you have a child — they will not believe that you can use less of it because it’s thicker. No matter how many times you explain it to them.) After mopping up toilet water, I went downstairs to start a load of laundry and saw a centipede the size of a cat skitter across the floor in front of me. I screamed, then cursed when it disappeared into a corner.

“This is the worst anniversary EVER!”

I went upstairs and grumbled to Matt until we decided to watch Mad Men online. Watching shows on the computer is what we do most nights after the kids go to bed. This welcome return to normalcy (and the soothing sound of ice clinking in Don Draper’s cocktail glass) helped dispel my bad mood. Matt, as is usual for him, had never even gotten crabby.

I won’t ever book a trip where we fly separately again. Not just because of Siena’s reaction, but because Matt is my favorite travel companion. I missed squeezing his arm as the plane took off, and I missed his ability to stay completely relaxed while checking in and going through security. (I tend to navigate the airport in a state of HIGH INTENSITY until we get to the gate — then and only then do I chill out.) Mostly, I just missed him. After eight years of marriage, I still like having him around. And not just because he usually cleans the litter box.

8:30 p.m. on a Saturday night, and my beloved husband and I are on two different floors of the house, curled up with separate laptops and at least eight internet browser windows open (each).

Is this sad? Is this modern marriage (with children)? Is this exactly what I want to be doing right now?

The answer, perhaps to all three but certainly to the last question, is yes.

Would it make things worse if I told you our last conversation was a raging argument heated debate calm and logical discussion about Twitter?*

Yes, it’s a pretty dorky state of affairs over here, that’s for sure.

…..

*A calm and logical discussion in which I was absolutely and undeniably right, and during which my rational arguments and compelling rhetoric left Matt’s position as little more than a smoldering wreckage of ideas THAT WERE NOT RIGHT.

That last post wasn’t as great as I wanted it to be, so I think I’ll start over. (Ha. Perfectionist Humor. I crack myself up.) But seriously, the subject is still on my mind as we prepare to send Siena off to kindergarten next week.

Siena has been asking me for stories about when I was her age, and I have a hard time remembering much about kindergarten. I remember walking to school, and getting in the wrong line to walk home* the first day until my best friend Heather spotted me and told the teacher we were supposed to walk together.

I also remember getting in trouble once and having to sit in the Time Out Chair because I got bored during Circle Time and started looking at books on the shelf next to me. (Neither of these stories is really helpful right now, as I attempt to quell Siena’s fears about starting school. I also got the chicken pox ON HALLOWEEN in kindergarten and no, I will not be sharing that little anecdote with her either.)

But one memory that really stands out to me, when I think about those first few years of elementary school, is the day I didn’t have homework in first grade. That’s right, day. I did homework every single night of first grade, except one.

Why? Was my average suburban neighborhood public school that rigorous? No. Was my first grade teacher especially draconian, drilling us relentlessly with letters and numbers and cutting out shapes? Hardly.

I had homework every night of first grade because I was never willing to be done with anything. It was never right; it was never good enough. I colored so slowly and meticulously that by the time the other kids had finished two pages, I still had three-quarters of my first one left. If I cut out a shape and it didn’t look right, I started over on a new one. I asked my teacher for multiple copies of worksheets, because I had written one letter wrong and when I erased it, it looked sloppy.

I actually remember the teacher telling me some of these projects looked fine, she thought they were great just the way they were, and I remember being disappointed by her low standards. I knew they could be better, and I brought them home and worked on them until they were closer to what I thought they should be. Or until my parents made me go to bed.

Then came the glorious day where, for whatever reason, I decided to color a little bit faster even if that meant a little bit sloppier, and I got everything done within the time allotted at school. I got to come home and play until bedtime. You know, like a kid. It was great. But then I remembered the green crayon going slightly outside the shapes of bushes and trees. (Seriously — I still recall exactly what that picture looked like, that Gateway to Slacking Picture that paved the way for every unfinished project I have ever abandoned since then. That picture is probably responsible for the disastrous state my house is in at this very moment.) And when I thought about that horrible sloppy coloring, I felt sick. I had homework every night for the rest of the school year.

I’ve spent the years since then seesawing back and forth between On Time and Good Enough. Things that are Good Enough for my inner panel of judges rarely come without the price of multiple sleepless nights (or I’m still working on them now) and things that are done On Time? Well, I mostly despise the living daylights out of them.

Anyway, I share this lifetime of inner turmoil to demonstrate that I am clearly not the best role model for Siena when it comes to her perfectionist tendencies. I don’t know how to help her balance getting things done with feeling good about her work, as I have clearly not mastered this yet myself. I want her to do well in school, but I want her to enjoy it more than I did. (Except college. I want her to enjoy college less than I did, and I would not be at all upset if she spent every weekend night in the library studying.)

Maybe you have a better handle on this stuff than I do. If so, I want your advice. I have to get this figured out now, before she gets to first grade when the pressure really starts.

…..

*For some reason they didn’t know where I was supposed to go, and when they asked me where I lived, I guessed and pointed in the exact opposite direction of my house**.

**Note to teachers: do not rely on a five-year-old’s sense of direction in such important matters as which way to send them walking home from school by themselves***.

***Note to self: your sense of direction has always sucked. Let’s try and remember this the next time you casually decide to just “take a different route home from Target and see if it’s any faster.” It won’t be, because you’ll get lost and confused and you’ll spend an extra twenty minutes driving around while the kids ask incessantly, “Are we LOST, Mama?!?”

I admit it. I have a problem: I want to do everything right. Not just right, but flawlessly, excellently. I want to reinvent the very concept of whatever it is I’m working on, so people around me will pause, amazed, to think wow, what she does has totally changed everything I ever thought about parenting [or writing an annual report, or whatever the task in question may be]. In other words, I tend to set really small, manageable expectations for myself.

Needless to say, the only outcome I have ever experienced as a result of this sort of thinking involves disappointment. Lots and lots of disappointment. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten better about handling the disappointment — I’ve developed strategies for avoiding it.

Strategy #1: Not Trying. If you’re not trying, it doesn’t matter if you fail to achieve excellence in a particular area. You can simply decide that something (having a clean house for example, not that I’m speaking from experience or anything here) is not Important. Then you don’t have to feel bad about the stacks of unsorted paper that sit so long they need to be dusted before you can actually sort them move them from one corner of your bedroom to another. You don’t have to berate yourself when large tumbleweeds of cat hair drift across the desert living room floor while you check your e-mail.

This strategy works pretty well as long as no one comes over.

Strategy #2: I Don’t Have Enough Time. This is similar to Strategy #1, in that I can employ it to avoid feeling disappointed in myself. If something is not perfect, not the best ever of its kind, it’s not my fault because I only had a tiny bit of time to work on it. It’s not like I tried my hardest and did absolutely everything I could and it still wasn’t perfect. That would be failure. But something that turns out halfway decent, given the time constraints, well, that’s not so bad. And you can take this strategy a step further by procrastinating, thereby ensuring that you will have limited time to complete the task. Genius.

Between deciding certain things don’t matter and procrastinating on the things that do matter until I just barely get them done, I can almost get by without having to beat myself up in my head. Almost.

But it has recently come to my attention that this is not how I want to live the rest of my life. The combination of avoiding certain things altogether because it might not be possible to do them flawlessly and the procrastination-freak-out-panic cycle is possibly not the healthiest. And it is certainly not the example I want to model for my kids.

What brought this to my attention? Well, the procrastination-induced sobbing fits and never-being-good-enough self-loathing aside, it was really when I saw Siena crumple her drawing and hurl it to the floor in tears because she had written one letter wrong as I helped her spell something. She stormed into her room and threw herself on the bed in tears.

“I’m never writing or doing that stupid drawing AGAIN!”

Umm.

Kind of like how I swear I’m never taking on another project like this AGAIN, every time I have any kind of deadline? Kind of like how I thought even a part-time job was incompatible with parenthood, because my performance was not up to my mental standard in either? Kind of like how I never think I should apply for a job if I have not done that exact thing (successfully) before, because the WORST THING EVER would be to get the job and not be AMAZING at it?

Yeah.

Time for both of us to make some changes.

This past Saturday we were out on a boat on Lake Minnetonka with our friends Mitch and Amy. (Hi guys, if you’re reading! Thanks for a fun day!) The weather was cloudy and the conversation turned to storms.

One of us, probably Matt or me because we’ve had this exact same discussion ourselves several times this summer, remarked on how weird it is that tornadoes always seem to go around the Twin Cities, never right through. They always seem to hit the suburbs or small towns.

Mitch and Amy, who live out in the country, agreed with us that this was weird.

“Maybe it’s something to do with the air quality. The storms hit all that pollution around the city and they just stop.”

Because Mitch and Amy put up with their fair share of jokes from our friends about dirt roads and commuting from North Dakota, we City Mice did not get defensive about our air quality. (Also, I’m not a scientist. This theory sounded as good to me as any other.)

Then we all shrugged and went back to the awesome business of hanging out on a boat.

…..

Yeah.

A tornado touched down in Minneapolis today.

So I would just like to take this opportunity to apologize to my fellow Minneapolis residents for the hubris that brought this down upon us. Sorry about your trees and property damage.

As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, I am strangely superstitious: bad things can be caused by my failure to worry about them. Claiming something is no cause for concern is basically begging the Universe to prove you wrong. Rejoicing (out loud) that we had gone X months without anyone getting sick is without a doubt the reason the kids and I have summer colds at this very moment. And now this.

While the most popular theory on Twitter this afternoon seemed to be God/the Universe/Mother Nature punishing Minnesota for bringing Brett Favre out of fake, flip-floppy retirement, I know it’s really my fault. Sorry, guys.

Earthquake, tsunami, forest fire, flash flood. Bat flu (why not?), zombies, lake pirates, alien invasion. I promise to worry about each of these before I go to bed tonight. And a new list tomorrow night. Feel free to send suggestions. Just trying to do my part to keep us all safe.

Well, not so much “adventures” as “things I have thought about today, mainly food-related.” But I felt the need to post an update after the sad tale of Siena’s first bus ride to camp.

And the update is that all is well, from what I gather. She comes home tired but rebounds nicely after dinner. Right now she is happily playing with Elliot and singing “9-1-1, Shorty fire burnin’ on the dance floor, whoa-oh” in a voice that sounds way more like Sean Kingston than you might expect from a five-year-old girl.

And she has plenty of fun things to tell us about: “shooting bows and arrows,” the giant slide, swimming, “the rock climbing where you go like this” (elaborate horizontal body contortions indicate that she is referring to bouldering), and at least one kid in her group whose name she can remember, a girl named Amelia. (Amelia, wherever you are, you have my undying gratitude for being nice enough that Siena remembered your name. She didn’t even remember the counselor’s name.)

So camp is going well, and I am feeling foolish for worrying that it wouldn’t. I just can’t shake the image of her hesitating in the middle of the bus, looking for a seat and ending up all by herself. It kills me. ***Sentimental Parenting Cliché Alert*** It kills me that I can’t go everywhere with her for the rest of her life and smooth out every possible bump in her path, making sure she is happy and comfortable at every moment. But even if there were any way of doing anything even remotely close to that, Siena, of course, wouldn’t want me to. She would kill me. She is tougher than I give her credit for, and way more independent than I ever expect of the baby I used to nurse five times a night, who never wanted to be out of my sight.

Other recent adventures/thoughts include pesto, lots and lots of pesto, and that comfy Ma Ingalls feeling I get from making something seasonal and storing it away for the long winter. (Like you can’t get fresh basil in December in the year 2009, and like freezing some pesto is in any way akin to the endless canning and preserving that went on in olden times, I know. [Eyes rolling at myself.] I still like it.

I also found a white skirt for Siena at Target for a whopping $3.49, and this is significant because 1) Elliot was mad that I wouldn’t buy him one, too and 2) Siena had asked this very morning if, instead of a plain white T-shirt to tie-dye at camp, she could have a skirt instead. And I had doubted that I could find a white skirt anywhere, much less a cheap clearance one, much less a cheap clearance one with shorts attached, making it playground-appropriate. Sometimes Target just really comes through for me. AS THEY SHOULD — I GO THERE ONCE A WEEK, EVEN IN WEEKS WHEN I ALSO GO TO TWO OTHER GROCERY STORES. Target, I can’t quit you.

Speaking of grocery stores, I have a Trader Joe’s story — for another post. It amused me, but this is getting long enough. So in place of a conclusion, I offer you this photo of some sweet corn and a bowl of melted butter:

Sweet corn and pesto. Summer, how I love you. And Camp, thanks for not destroying Siena’s enthusiasm for life. That’ll come later, like when she gets her first job.