Lessons in Motherhood

Today was my first parent-teacher conference at Hailey’s school. I was really expecting good news and guess what? I got good news. Hailey is fine. She’s doing great. She’s a wonderful girl. I told her all about my discussion with her teacher, gave her tons of praise about her performance at school, and do you know what she said?

“But I didn’t get to be student of the day today.” Really?!?!? She is so my kid sometimes that I can’t even stand it. I suppose that my job for the future is really going to be to support her need for perfection while giving her the confidence to find peace in herself no matter what.

Being a perfectionist myself, I’m not even sure how to do that. Maybe there’s something on how.com. What would I look up? How to make sure your kid is not as neurotic as you are? If you’ve raised a non-neurotic kid (parental units, you are clearly disqualified), I’d love to hear from you.

I suppose that you are thinking that this post is going to be about me taking on the challenges of parenting head on. It’s not. Nope. It’s about something much more disgusting and nefarious than that. In fact, you either going to find this post completely revolting, simply adorable or both.

This post is actually about head on shrimp. Yes, indeed. I am nothing if not a cheap bastard. So, when a crazy supermarket sent me a coupon for $2.99 shrimp, I thought what the hell. Sure. I saw that the shrimp had heads with big long antenae, but how bad could it be?

Well, turns out that like most animals, shrimp have brains. And, those brains are icky and nasty and squeeze out the top when you tear there heads off. As if that’s not bad enough, I have serious issues with eating animals that look like animals so tearing heads off of shrimp was not my idea of a rockin’ good time. Solution to this massive problem? Ask my kids to do the dirty work.

That was a good idea until I pretended that one of the shrimp was alive, and Hailey went running from the room. Strike one. Next up, Sophia.

Sophia watched me clean the heads off of some shrimp, and jumped right in. Not only did she have no problem pulling some heads off, but she also was an expert brain-cleaner-offer…who knew?

Hailey eventually came around to the tearing the legs and shells off, and in about 3 hours, we had cleaned five shrimp. Yummy yums.

This is the first week of kindergarten homework, and I am just not ready. Well, I’m ready, but it’s really unfortunate timing for Hailey. She happens to really love stripes right now. Yes. You read that right. She loves stripes.

I know that you are wondering what stripes and homework have in common. Well, I’ll tell you. Homework is supposed to take 15 minutes or less every night. Homework involves coloring. Everything that Hailey colors must have stripes. Stripes take a long freaking time to color. Do you see the connection now? You see my dilemma?

I tried to sort of sit there while she did her homework, but the whole time I was screaming inside… “SNAKES DON’T HAVE PINK AND PURPLE STRIPES…JUST COLOR THE SNAKE ONE COLOR…IT’S FASTER!!!” But did I say that…NO! Just because I am not inherently a patient person, it does not mean that I cannot pretend to be patient. And isn’t that really the most important lesson…fake it until you make it.

There are many ways in which I am very well equipped to be a parent – outstanding baking skills, some semblance of patience, ability to handle child nasties (poop, vomit, etc), eyes in the back of my head, etc. You know, I’ve got the basics.

Yet, there is one way that I am completely ill-equipped – I have sensitive hearing. OMG…when my girls scream in that high pitched voice, it makes me want to lock myself in the back of my closet and just rock myself back to sanity. Really! I can’t take it. It hurts my ears and makes the inside of my brain explode. I’m losing brain cells here, people.

Are they too young to lock in the basement? What about outside? We have a playroom. Why must they run around screaming in the same room as me? I’m just totally not equipped for this motherhood thing sometimes.

When a dance party will break out at the frozen yogurt shop

Yogurt Dance Party from luke hamilton on Vimeo.

It’s been a busy few days here at the Hamilton household. Today was curriculum night at school where Hailey’s teacher told us all about what she does every day. Wow! Her teacher has got this thing down. She has about a billion different activities that they do every day. She’s one super-creative lady.

I’ve also had the joy of being a Lunch Buddy at school. What is a Lunch Buddy? It’s the job that the school created to make parents feel insanely guilty about how mean we were to the lunch ladies when we were in school. If only I could find those nice hair-netted women, I would apologize for all of the food that wound up on the floor. It was a news flash – KIDS ARE GROSS! I know, quite a shocker. Also, they throw a lot of food away. Oh, and Miss Hailey Hamilton actually ate her dessert before her meal. What five-year-old would do that?

Anyway, I thought that I would show you what she’s learning with this little video…

Calendar Song from luke hamilton on Vimeo.

Before you call Child Protective Services, let me remind you that I did not put her in the dryer. I heard her yelling in there, and then I ran in to video it. Luke, being the more reasonable parent at the time thought that I was being terrible for encouraging such behavior. However, you can tell from the video that I ask her multiple times to get out. That being said, if I had really wanted her to get out, she damn well would have gotten out immediately. But this was so much more entertaining. Don’t you agree?

Dryer from luke hamilton on Vimeo.

PS: I leave the dryer closed these days just so we don’t have any future episodes.

If Peter Pan were a polygamist and his real name was Cathy Rigby performing in the British stage version of the famous story, I can guarantee you that he would have two wives. Their names would be Hailey and Sophia. How do I know that? Because my children are obsessed with this

How did this happen? Well, it all started with the evil magic of Netflix. Oh Netflix. You put everything at our fingertips. Some good. Some not so good. I’m not sure how the stage version of Peter Pan made it into the house. I think Luke must have found it deep in the depths of the musical section of Netflix. Hailey was so thrilled the first time she watched it that she said “Look, they’re real people.” I guess maybe we overdo it on the cartoons a bit.

Anyway, the girls are now obsessed with watching Cathy Rigby play Peter Pan. Sophia knows how to turn on my phone, scroll to Netflix and find Peter Pan. Tonight I actually offered to take them for ice cream if they turned off the play. Nope. It was unanimous. Peter won…again.

All of the credit for these gorgeous pictures goes to my patient husband who took the time to recolor and retouch them. I think they’re absolutely beautiful. In fact, I couldn’t decide which ones to post, so you can see them all here.

For entertainment value…

Hailey is doing swimmingly in school. She’s also doing schoolingly at swim. Hmm…that worked better in my head. Anyway, she’s been really enjoying kindergarten so far. I wish that I could record all of the stories that she tells. Trying to understand what goes on at school is like trying to piece together a jigsaw puzzle where three-quarters of the pieces are missing and the box top is missing.

Here’s a good example:

Me: Hailey, what was your favorite part about school today?

Hailey: Drawing

Me: Oh, what did you draw?

Hailey: I didn’t draw I just colored because the teacher drew this little animal with big black spots on his eyes and he was sad but then he was happy. I didn’t draw him, I just colored.

Me: Ok. Was the animal a bunny or a dog or a raccoon?

Hailey: Oh yeah. It was a raccoon.

Me: What else can you tell me about the raccoon?

Hailey: Well, he was really funny, but then there was a boy and he was the king. He even had a thing on his chair because he was the king and also a girl was the queen.

Me: What were they the king and queen of?

Hailey: The class. Maybe someday I will be the queen.

Huh??? I mean really. That is a little bit of a combination of stories that I have heard, but I gave you no more or less information than what I have been able to dig out of her. Sometimes at the end of the week when they send her work home, I start to piece the story together together.

For example, the raccoon was part of a story about a raccoon going to school for the first time. The king and queen thing was some exercise that they did to have the kids get to know each other. They each got to be the king or queen for one day and would tell the class about him or herself. Then the classmates would each draw a picture of the chosen one as he/she specified. I know this because Hailey came home with a big folder of drawings and a crown. Mystery solved.