Lessons in Motherhood

Tonight Sophia lost her binky. Not really. Luke took her binky because she didn’t listen. This happened at about 8:30pm. It’s now 10:00pm. Each of us – Luke, my mother, and myself – has been up there to comfort her (although not to give her the binky). At about 9:30, I heard a bump bump bump down the stairs. Sophia was sitting at the top of the stairs with everything from her bed, and threw here glow worm down. Ugh. So, by 9:50, I finally sent Luke up. It’s his fault that she doesn’t have the damn binky to begin with. Thus, he must suffer the wrath of Fifi. I’m going to bed. It’s past my bedtime. Grrr.

Today was Sophia’s first day of big girl swim class, as in the swim class that she does by herself without Mommy. We were very excited for her, and I was excited to not have to get into the water. I promise you that Fifi was all geared up to go to class until something horrible and terrible happened. Her normal teacher, Ms. Stephanie had to fill in for another class so Sophia ended up with Hailey’s teacher – Coach Andy.

That was completely unacceptable for her. She threw a fit and would not get in the water. She wouldn’t even sit on the side of the pool. There was a point at which she was laying on her back next to the pool screaming. It was a bad scene. I tried to sneak away into the locker room, while Coach Andy grabbed her. She somehow squirmed out of his grip and went sprinting into the locker room. I almost gave up, but then Grandma gave me some words of encouragement. So, I brought her back into the pool area, and the girl teacher came over. Of course, there was absolutely no hesitation. That kid just jumped into the water and started serenading the teacher with Baby Baby Oh. Another important lesson learned.

This is Sophia’s idea of cleaning. While I was helping Hailey with her homework, which continues to be a painful experience, Sophia decided to clean the whole downstairs. Basically, “cleaning” entailed taking everything off of the floor or any surface of the house and bringing it out to the deck. Quite a job!

Who wants to help fund Hailey’s public school education? Oh, don’t all jump at once. Hey, it’s not like I’m asking you to pay for college (YET). All I need you to do is just cut out Box Top symbols like the one I’ve conveniently posted below…

Please check your pantries and your grocery stores for Box Tops for Education symbols. I cannot condone cutting these stupid little things off of boxes at the grocery store without first buying the products, but what I don’t know can’t hurt me.

Also, for your convenience, you can find a list of products with the symbols here.

Oh, and not at all for your convenience, these are due next week. So, if you want to help, you better get crackin’. Love you all

Most of the time when Luke is out of town, I run around completing all of my motherly duties. I finish and think, “yeah, I got this.”

Then, there are the dark nights. Maybe I’m just a little tired, or god forbid, burned out. I don’t know. All I know is that it started with Fifi crying in the car, then moved to Hailey crying in the car, then Fifi crying at home, then Hailey crying on the porch. Oh Lord.

After all of that crying, we still had to do homework. Then the crying really began. “I don’t want to do homework. I don’t like homework. I can’t spell right. This is never going to work.” On and on and on. Homework is supposed to take 15 minutes. It took at least an hour and it was half assed.

Moving on, then there was more crying, not listening at bed time, etc, etc. Did I mention that it was one of THOSE nights?

I know one thing that will make me happy…

The PTA is sponsoring an art contest. Perfect. That’s right up Hailey’s alley. Anything involving art gets lots of attention from our little wonder kid who runs around spouting off facts about DaVinci and the five great Renaissance artists.

So, I enrolled her in this contest, which has a theme of Diversity. The kids were supposed to create art about “What Diversity Means to Me.” The PTA even had an art show of local artists who shared some of their work. Like a moron, I assumed that someone during this after school art show had explained to the children what diversity means before they started their picture. Hailey came home from the session with a picture of a planet with people on it. Very Diversity-esque I thought.

As she continued to work on it, she started adding other planets. Hmm…slightly less diversity-esque. Then, she started labeling planets – Rth, Satrn, Mon, etc. Hmm…kind of more sciencey and less diversity-esque. I had to ask her, “Hailey, can you tell me how your picture reflects diversity?” “What’s diversity?” she asked.

Oh boy. Now, I have to explain diversity? Ugh. I went into this long explanation about diversity in people and animals. Yeah. I threw in some biodiversity…I mean what the heck, that kind of tells the story, and frankly, it’s pretty hard to teach diversity to a kid who thinks that all people are equal without implying that we have to think about diversity because there are terrible, awful things like racism and sexism and bigotry and general ignorance out there. Whatever. I did my best. So, after what my Sociologist-self thought was a pretty good explanation, I asked her again how her picture reflected diversity. Of course, there is a very easy way to tie it together with diversity, but could she get there without too much prodding? Her answer, “well, space has diversity because there’s space men and space women and they’re all different colors.”

Riiiiggghhhttt…ok. Well, we won’t be entering that contest after all. I suppose that I can blame Star Wars for this, but we actually have a bigger problem here. If she ends up talking about Rancors and Cracian thumpers (yes, those are real Star Wars creatures…I looked them up) in 5th grade science class, I’m pretty sure I’m going to get a call from the guidance counselor or the school psychologist or someone who’s going to be asking some pretty tough questions. Then, I’ll have to say that it all started back when she didn’t understand diversity in Kindergarten because she thinks all people are the same no matter what and isn’t that really the lesson that we are supposed to be teaching them after all?

My children are constantly losing things. I think that’s just the curse of having children. Because here’s a secret about children – they are completely illogical and therefore, they put things everywhere. In fact, the more they love something, the more likely they are to hide it somewhere. Kind of like that dog in the commercial who keeps moving his bone around until eventually it gets covered by an umbrella. You know that one? If I was pregnant right now, that commercial would probably make me cry. Thank god those days are over.

Anyway, I’ve been searching for Sophia’s glow worm and Pasquel toy for about two weeks now. These are the two toys that she sleeps with every night. In fact, I’ve spent the past few weeks rushing to turn out the lights at night in the hopes that she would forget to ask me for the damn stuffed animals. I’ve been kind of like the night time ninja. Throw her in bed and then sneak away before she can ask any questions.

In reality, I have torn this house apart looking for them. So, I think it’s particularly ironic that I found them when I was looking for something else. In this case, we were on a great search for binkies. Yes, Sophia still uses a binky. Don’t judge me. I don’t have the energy to take them away just yet.

Anyway, she had two binkies during her nap. Then, they disappeared. From the top bunk, she started pointing down and insisting that they were down below here. I opened a box that had been sitting next to her bed for a month. Inside were the animals. They were right next to the bed the whole time!!!! Argh! Why was the most obvious place the one that I didn’t check?

Haha..while I’m writing this, Luke is running around muttering “where is the the remote?” We actually have lost all of the remotes for upstairs and downstairs. He believes that we should just buy new remotes and new everything that gets lost. In fact, I suspect that he’s going to lose his iPhone soon. Isn’t there a new one coming out?

Oh, he just found the remote inside a box of magazines under the cabinet. The remote, a box of bandaids, one shoe, a tiny toy turtle, and the sticky cushion that keeps my kitchen rug from sliding all over (I didn’t even realize that thing was missing).

Ok. Back to the story of the missing binkies. So, in the box by the bed, I found the animals but not the binkies. Sophia continued to point down from her bunk. That’s when I realized that she had put her binkies into her dirty diaper container. Yup. You read that right. She doesn’t even use diapers anymore, but there were still some nasty ones in there. Nasty diapers and two binkies.

It’s been three sessions now, and Hailey is still loving swim class. She has an amazing coach who really focuses on teaching her the fundamentals of each stroke, while miraculously making the class fun. Unfortunately, Sophia has only been able to watch Hailey swim because kids have to be three to take classes without a parent.

Well, it just wasn’t fair so I signed Sophia up for the only class they had for two-year-olds, which is a Mommy and me class on Saturdays. Yesterday we tried it out, and I can definitely say that it is not going to work out for us. The class is more focused on getting kids acquainted with the water. There’s a lot of singing and walking in a circle with a minor amount of swim fundamentals mixed in.

Sophia was totally not into it. She wanted to swim not sing. She was a complete distraction to the class, jumping off the side, insisting on using a kickboard for everything, whining to go to the other class that was going on. It was a bad scene. After the class, the teacher told me that I could try to move her up a class, but it requires some hoop jumping. Hoop jumping? It’s just swim class for crying out loud! I should have just lied and said she was three (she’s kind of a big two anyway and by “big two” I mean built like a wrecking ball).

So, there you have it. I tried. I’m adding hoop jumping to my “to do” list for next week. We’ll see what I can accomplish.

Someone has decided that she doesn’t need a nap anymore. That was Saturday when she made that decision. I nearly lost my mind that afternoon…mainly because I wanted to take a nap too. Let’s just say that one of us was a wee bit cranky, and it wasn’t Sophia.

Then, Saturday night we had an evening in the park with Hailey’s school. They had set up music, games, bake sales, and a giant movie screen. We didn’t get the girls in bed that night until close to 10pm, but Sophia was just fine. Well, she did pass out in the car almost the instant that we turned it on, but her mood was fine.

Sunday rolled around, and I held my breath. I’m just not ready for this kid to give up naps. I need those two hours on the weekends to get things done. So, she did take a nap on Sunday, but not until really late. And I’m not even convinced that she slept, but she did stay in her bed for a few hours so I’m not going to complain.

This all brings up another thought which is WHY ARE THEY GETTING SO BIG!?!?!? Hailey got her hair cut this weekend, and she instantly went from 5 to 25. It looks totally adorable, but she does look much older. Between the haircut, and her socializing at that school function, I was just having flash forwards all weekend.

PS: This photo was taken in Bed, Bath and Beyond where we were doing Hailey’s least favorite activity – SHOPPING. I’ve already recorded her whining about having to go shopping. I figure that will provide a good laugh when she’s a teenager, and she’s begging to go to the mall.

Why? Why? Why can’t I do anything simple? I mean really. It’s Fruits and Veggies Month at Hailey’s school. Each child in her class got a color and tomorrow we are supposed to bring in fruits or vegetables of that color. Hailey got orange. Carrots and oranges were taken. What do I come up with? Sweet potatoes. But I can’t possibly just send sweet potatoes…nooooo..that would be too easy. I have to make them into sweet potato chips.

As a very important side note…I’ve never made sweet potato chips. Nope. Never. But it’s just sliced sweet potatoes on a pan…how hard could it be? Well, it’s not hard except for if you finished a full day of work, took two children to swim class, made dinner, put two kids in the bath, read stories, took a dog who hates the rain downstairs so she could pee under the cover of the deck (honestly…she’s crazy), AND didn’t have any dinner yourself. Then, it’s not so easy. So, this is what I ended up with…a whole freaking two pans of burnt sweet potato chips.