***Just let the music play in the background, it'll be okay.***
Dear Loyal Supporters of Unremarkable Files:
It's with a heavy heart that I inform you of the results of last night's 2015 Bloggies awards ceremony. We fought a courageous fight, but Unremarkable Files was not named "best new weblog."
I know this may come as a shock to many of you, especially thosewho sacrificed so much of yourselves to ensure our victory. Try not to be discouraged; your effort was not in vain.
I can picture each of you, sitting valiantly at your computer, scrolling down and clicking "submit" on your electronic ballots. Your heroic actions on the day you voted, regardless of the outcome, show the true measure of your character. You made the blogosphere proud.
With the permission of a few of your brave comrades, I'd like to share a collage of readers' selfies taken at the moment they received the terrible news that Unremarkable Files was only a runner-up and not the winner. Thank you to all who sent in your photos. They will help others process their emotions and know that they're not alone.
Keep your chin up and remember: it's always darkest before the dawn. We will soldier on.
Was it Albert Einstein who said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?
Every Sunday morning, there's no doubt in my mind that this is going to be the day we walk in to church on time. You'd think we have no excuse for being late since we live within 5 minutes of the chapel. But in this house, there's always an excuse. Several, in fact.
1. The toilet overflowed after someone flushed a toy harmonica. 2. No one could hear me say it was time to go over the pterodactyl noises coming from my son. 3. I thought we had plenty of time. The clock I was looking at still isn't set ahead for daylight savings. 4. I was checking my email, and, well, I got distracted... 5. Daughter lost her shoes (found one in the bathroom, the other in her backpack.) 6. The toddler wanted to wear a grass hula skirt out of the dress-up bin. 7. It takes a 3-year-old a long time to put on a pair of tights by herself. 8. Took a while to convince preschooler her dress was on backward. 9. Son buttoned his shirt crooked. He had to redo it. Still crooked. 10. Daughter claimed that her dress shoes had shrunk. 11. One child required an unscheduled shower (don't ask.) 12. Someone's tights were itchy. 13. Daughter's necklace was tangled. 14. Son spilled his cereal bowl on his sister. Judging from her reaction, it was filled with hydrochloric acid. 15. Baby mashed half his breakfast into his hair and threw the rest on the floor. 16. While I was bathing the baby, son stepped in oatmeal and tracked it around the house. 17. No clean socks.
18. No clean underwear.
19. A fight broke out in the bathroom over who clogged up the toothpaste. 20. Brush got stuck in daughter's hair. 21. Had to change into a longer skirt because I haven't shaved. 22. Preschooler accidentally dipped her dress in the toilet using the bathroom. 23. Daughter urgently needed a Band-Aid for a 3 day old cut. 24. Printer wouldn't work and I couldn't get my Sunday School lesson notes off the computer. 25. Daughter got a bloody nose. Had to Google "how to remove blood from clothes, carpet, bedding, and stuffed animals." 26. Toddler drew on herself with a marker. 27. Pants-wetting incident. While sitting on my lap. 28. Daughter tripped on the stairs. Responded to twisted ankle as if her leg had been severed.
29. Time-outs were necessary after rampant disregard for the "swords only hit other swords" rule.
30. Couldn't find our scriptures. 31. Couldn't find the pacifier. 32. Couldn't find the car keys. 33. Went through all pants pockets in the dirty laundry, shook out purse and refilled it, finally found keys wedged beneath the oven. 34. Preschooler needed to put all her dolls down for naps before we left. 35. Kids wanted to build one last thing out of Legos. Pleeeeease...?
36. Toddler's shoes were on the wrong feet. And her socks were hurting her. 37. Kids misheard me and thought "Let's go" was actually "You should all develop an extreme urge to use the bathroom now." 38. Then the baby pooped. 39. Son wouldn't put on shoes unless I clipped his toenails first. 40. Daughter couldn't get in the car without a book to read on the way. 41. Realized preschooler wasn't wearing underwear, had to go back inside. 42. Preschooler refused to accept that her "Sunday" days-of-the-week underwear was in the laundry. 43. Two kids smacked their heads together getting into the van. 44. Son's seat belt wouldn't buckle. 45. Someone left the van door open last night and the battery was dead. 46. Ran over a scooter backing out of the garage. 47. Had to go back for forgotten wipes and diapers. 48. Couldn't find a spot in the church parking lot. 49. Seat belt buckle flew up and hit someone in the eye when released. 50. Spit bath for the toddler after looking in rearview mirror and noticing her massive bird's nest hairstyle. And her brother's bed head.
Miraculously, we still have a few minutes. Just enough time to walk in and find a seat before church starts! Then a sad little voice whines from the backseat: "But Mom, I don't have any shoes on!"
Well, I say to myself as we go back home for shoes, maybe not today. But I just know we'll definitely be on time next week.
It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! That means 7 quick thoughts for the last 7 days.
—1—
Thanks to everybody who voted for me or at least thought about voting for me in the 2015 Bloggies.
You can hear the winners announced live on the Bloggies' Twitter feed and Facebook page from 8-10:30 PM EST Sunday night, or you can just assume the outcome from the excessive bragging or awkward silence on my blog Monday morning.
—2—
In a recent Twilight Zone moment, my 8-year-old said to me, "Mom, I'm glad you let us play on the iPad but not too much." I just stared at her dumbfounded, thinking, Who are you and why are you inhabiting a child's body?
I'm pretty sure at 8 years old, my dream day would've been eating Lucky Charms for every meal and watching 10 straight hours of Animaniacs. Moderation was for old people.
—3—
It's been a month since joining Twitter and the verdict is: I like it. I never thought I'd be saying that about any social media, but I like having mini-conversations with other bloggers I admire:
—4—
You know the kind of day when you're exhausted and the kids aren't listening and your husband is working late and it's 6:30 PM but you still don't know what you're having for dinner?
Well, I was having that day and my 3-year-old told me to "be happy."
I was still grumpy, so I asked her, "What if I don't feel like being happy?" (I know, I'm so mature.)
"Drink water," she advised.
—5—
My 8-year-old is memorizing her times tables at school. Every day, she does a page of multiplication problems for me to sign and correct.
Not only does correcting get old (some days, I admit to just glancing at it and marking them all right as long as I don't see any letters or irrelevant doodles instead of numbers,) but this week is times 12, and that's a problem for me.
When I was in school, I only needed to memorize my times tables up to 10. Meaning that I don't know off the top of my head what 11 x 12 is.
So actually correcting this requires me to do math in my head. At the end of a long day. While I'm also trying to cook dinner, monitor piano practice, keep the baby from knocking over the Lego tower, and wipe someone's behind in the bathroom. Sure, no problem. Anything else you want me to do? Levitate, perhaps?
—6—
Technically, March 20th was the first day of spring. But for me, it isn't really spring until I've had my annual garage freakout.
All winter, we've just been tossing stuff in the garage, averting our eyes, and running inside before we freeze to death. On top of that disorganized mess, there are the sleds, scooters, and balls my kids have dragged out and strewn everywhere over the last 4 months.
With the nicer weather on Thursday, I stood in the garage surveying the carnage for a good 30 seconds, then spent the next hour Googling 'garage organization' and muttering to myself.
I'm not even going to show you a picture of our garage because it'd either (a) make your screen explode, or (b) cause permanent ocular damage.
"Oh no, I haven't gotten a new Easter dress yet!" my oldest daughter exclaimed from the recesses of her bedroom closet.
We were smack in the middle of the Great Closet Cleanout, which happens approximately once a week since my children are fond of throwing their dirty clothes on the closet floor, then sprinkling clean clothes and used towels from the shower on top just for good measure.
I wondered for a moment why that thought even crossed my daughter's mind. I don't think I've ever bought her an "Easter dress" in her life, mostly because I don't buy stuff unless we need it and I like to think of us as minimalists. Also because I'm cheap.
But as my daughter organized her closet full of dresses and claimed to need another one, I realized we were far from minimalists.
We're drowning in a culture of excess, to the point where the only problems that could even exist in my kids' minds are first-world ones.
During summer vacation from school, the kids and I take a pretend "trip around the world," learning about different countries in an attempt to keep young brains from atrophying. During the week we "visited" Mauritania, we got a book from the library about what Mauritanian kids do all day.
A popular children's game in Mauritania, just like here in New England, is soccer. But while my children get chauffeured to the field in our air-conditioned Kia and enjoy a snack brought by the coach at halftime, the kids in the book were playing barefoot in the dirt and kicking around a wad of plastic shopping bags secured with a rubber band.
My kids have so many toys, books, games, and dress ups that we have to rotate them in and out of the attic. The kids in the book played with little cars they fashioned from wire hangers and pieces of tinfoil — toys they literally made out of trash.
Most of the time I try not to think about this too much, because when I do, it disgusts me. Not just because we have so much, but because we're constantly complaining about it.
Last summer, a friend and I took our kids to the lake and watched them splashing around while we commiserated about how impossible it all is: the cooking, the cleaning, the dropping off and picking up. And that part about helping our kids grow up to be halfway decent people, too.
When there was a lull in the conversation I said jokingly, "Well, let's just lounge on the beach and complain about how hard our lives are." We laughed, and our talk turned to other things.
But really, I've got no excuse to be unsatisfied. Yes, my floor is littered with crusty noodles and splatters of dried spaghetti sauce from last night, but it means that I have a floor. And walls. And a roof.
It means I have enough food to feed my children and extra to spare.
Most of all, it means that I have 5 beautiful, healthy kids who don't have to worry about anything bigger than what they're going to wear on Easter Sunday.
As I typed "how to find the name of a song with no words" into my favorite search engine today, it suddenly occurred to me that I must look very interesting indeed to Google.
Whenever I want a definition, an answer, or a tutorial, I Google it. That adds up to a dozen or more searches a day, which begs the question: who does Google think I am?
Judging from my search history for the last 2 days, I'm a bad speller who knows little to nothing about technology, cleans up lots of messes, and is possibly schizophrenic.
Here's the raw, unedited list of 2 days of Googling, starting with the most recent. I omitted all the searches that were obviously performed by Phillip like 'mavrik gimbal driver' and 'how to make a lithium battery.' (I don't even want to know what's he's up to.)
remove set in vaseline stains (the baby had a sensory playdate with a tub of petroleum jelly yesterday morning)
how to remove vaseline from fabric
how many cups in a galon ('gallon' spelled wrong, guess I type too fast)
homemade laundry detergent
is tanner patrick mormon
veluptuous (don't get the wrong idea, I was writing the word 'voluptuous' and couldn't figure out how to spell it)
ari rees lds living (awesome mormon blogger at I Go By Ari)
independent movie philip writer ( my 3-year-old accidentally played a trailer on the iPad for an amusing-looking indie movie called Listen Up Philip, which I wanted to find again to show my Phillip)
how do i post to fb page with a hyperlinked work (meant to type 'word')
word count
gluten free pie crust (shhh, don't tell Phillip — it's a surprise)
em dash
how do i put a link with picture on twitter (if you are a social media platform, I know nothing about you)
brain chemistry volunteering makes us happy
mac and cheese recipe (looking for a recipe that didn't involve the freakishly-colored powder we affectionately call "the yellow death")
vietnam war (I'm reading a book that assumes I have a lot more knowledge of world history than I do)
ho chi minh (ditto)
plaintative (told you I'm the worst English major; through this search I learned that the word is actually 'plaintive')
flickr creative commons
women in refrigerators (again, probably not what you think; this is the name of a site about violence against female characters in comic books, which I read about in an article)
Frankly, I'm a little frightened to think that this is the picture Google (or anyone) has of me. But it is what it is.
From time to time I read blog posts about missing the woman you were before you had children: when you had free time, more money, and could sleep in on the weekends.
I read them sort of like I'd read the memoir of a Navy SEAL. Interesting, and I don't discount any woman's experience, but I can't relate at all.
Sure, I can sympathize. I know kids change everything.
I have 5 of them and understand pretty well that once you're a mother, you need to pack like a nomad traveling through the desert every time you go anywhere. Date nights suddenly require a Herculean effort, me-time is as rare as a Bigfoot sighting, and most of the time you're just really tired.
But still, I can't say that I miss my pre-kid life.
Part of it is that I married and had kids young: I got married a month after my 21st birthday and had my first baby just before turning 22.
So it's not like I was giving up a fabulous lifestyle to become a scullery maid. When you're 21 years old, you don't have a lifestyle. You have a basement apartment with furniture from your parents' garage and Ramen noodles for dinner.
Basically all of my adult life, I've been a wife and a mom. I've never really seen my kids as additions to my life or changes to my life — they're simply an integral part of it and always have been.
Me, Phillip, and our first baby graduating from college together.
Next stop: world domination.
I know having children involves a level of losing yourself that's incomprehensible to most people without kids. Sometimes when Phillip has a hard day at work I joke, "Well, at least your boss lets you decide when to go to the bathroom!"
I'm only half-kidding when I say this.
When you have kids, nothing is just yours anymore. Enjoy the first few sips of your drink because after that it'll be filled with graham cracker backwash. You have to hide in the garage to eat a cookie, and forget about privacy when using the restroom.
They even take over your thoughts, so that you're constantly worrying about them and thinking about them, even when they aren't there.
Becoming a mom, whether you stay at home full-time or work or a combination of the two, changes you. It does involve losing yourself.
I think that's okay, though. Motherhood is one of the things I think of when I read: "He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it" (Matthew 10: 39.)
Losing your pre-child life might involve some honest-to-goodness grief, and I can imagine that the longer you've lived it the more intense the sorrow might be.
But in losing my life to pick up the life of a mom, I've found myself. Throughout my 10-year journey as a mom, my character has changed for the better. I'm more responsible, less lazy, more willing to help, more understanding. (I'm still working on "more patient.")
Had I not laid aside whatever childfree life I could've pursued, who knows: I may have developed those same characteristics, but all I know is that in my present life, motherhood has been the crucible where my best qualities are developed and the roughest parts of me are continually sanded and polished.
Heck yes, I would love to take an an uninterrupted shower once in a while. But still, I don't miss the woman I was before kids because in mothering, I've truly found my life.
It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! That means 7 quick thoughts for the last 7 days.
—1—
Did you vote for me in the Bloggies? Only a few days left, and then your chance will be gone.
Probably.
Unless you enjoy the bitter taste of regret, visit the 2015 Bloggies and vote for Unremarkable Files as "Best New Weblog." Polls close on Sunday, March 22nd.
—2—
Overheard while my kids were getting snacks for themselves:
Son: [fake screams of pain as he cracked open his hard-boiled egg and slowly peeled off the shell]
Daughter: You're a horrible person! I did mine quickly so it didn't feel a thing!
—3—
Like changing your mailing address or your last name, I learned this week that moving your blog to a new URL is never as simple as it sounds. I spent a lot of time verbally berating my computer, most of all because every link suddenly pointed to a redirect message that said "Your computer might explode if you click 'yes,' but do you want to be redirected to this new site anyway?" (I'm paraphrasing.)
Through this process, I learned that I don't actually know anything about how the Internet works. Messing with all that DNS stuff is like sorcery to me, so I just had to cling to the soothing voice of Arjhay at Google Domains support and hope for the best. Luckily, things appear to be running smoothly now.
Arjhay, if you're reading, thanks for teaching me that 'ISP' is just a fancy-pants way of saying "really long number with periods."
—4—
We celebrated St. Patrick's Day in our house with green eggs and green milk for breakfast. One thing I like about St. Patrick's Day is that it makes the green laminate counters in the kitchen look festive instead of dated!
Don't judge. If your house was built in the '90s, you'd have forest green all over the place, too.
—5—
Pro: The baby loves his new walker.
Con: It took me 10 minutes to find the sheet with the directions in English, letalone put the thing together.
To be honest, just looking for the assembly instructions made me so tired that the whole thing was promptly outsourced to Phillip.
—6—
Speaking of Phillip, he just returned from another work trip. To Disneyworld.
His engineering materials conference was held at the Walt Disney World Swan & Dolphin Resorts, which I still don't really get, but whatever.
He didn't actually go inside the park, but it was 80 degrees, there were palm trees, and the hotel maid washed his dirty dishes if he forgot the night before and left them in the sink. Sounds like an alright time to me.
—7—
The other thing I've learned from Phillip being gone for the past few weeks is that I'm incapable of making good decisions about bedtime on my own.
Left to my own devices, I apparently gravitate toward the same sleep patterns as a college kid during finals week, but with less naps.
Today I was reading the Bible story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego to my son from a book of illustrated scripture stories that we keep in the living room.
Quick summary: these guys were Hebrews brought to Babylon's court as kids and raised to be the king's servants. They grew up and were put in positions of at least some power, when some (probably jealous) people threw them under the bus by pointing out to the king that they weren't following the law about worshiping the statue he'd built for that purpose. The penalty for disobeying was death by dry sauna in the king's furnaces.
As a kid, the story I learned always went something like, "but Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego weren't afraid, because they knew that the Lord would protect them."
From our illustrated scripture story book:
Our 3 protagonists standing before the flying purple people-eater — I mean, the king.
But actually, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego didn't know that the Lord would protect them. Before they were thrown into the furnace they were taken to the king for one last chance. They told him,
"If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace; and he will deliver us out of thy hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee , O king, that we will not serve thy gods , nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up." (Daniel 3: 17-18.)
As you can imagine, this wasn't quite what the king wanted to hear and so off they went to the furnace.
In that particular instance, God did save them. An angel appeared in the furnace and even though the temperature was so hot it killed the guards standing outside, it didn't hurt Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego. But judging from their response to the king, they were probably hauled off to the furnace knowing there was a good chance they weren't going to be walking back out of it. They knew that God could save them, but they didn't know that He would.
It's a hard thing to know that sometimes, God doesn't stop bad things from happening. Loved ones get sick and might even die, even though we're praying for their speedy recovery. People struggle with chronic illnesses or infertility their whole lives, and might never be healed.
At the end of His life on this earth, Christ Himself prayed, "Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done" (Luke 22: 42.) He wasn't spared from the ultimate suffering of shouldering the sins of every person who ever lived simultaneously. I can imagine that compared to this, being burned alive in a furnace would've seemed like a picnic luncheon straight out of Downton Abbey.
Sometimes when I pray for safety or health (for myself or someone else,) I'm afraid to include the "but if not" in my prayers. I'm trying to get better at that, and the times when I've been able to say it and really mean it, I've felt an overwhelming sense of peace regardless of the outcome.
It takes a lot of trust and perspective to be able to say what Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego said. Apparently they knew that God doesn't always deliver us from our trials immediately, but eventually He'll make everything right.
When my oldest was still a preschooler, we lived in Ohio near a great rec center that offered a ton of classes for free. Since she needed the practice being in social situations and I needed to get out of the house, we were there regularly for everything from ballet to pottery.
One day while we were killing time in the lobby before karate class, I noticed a flyer taped to one of the pillars advertising a local tee-ball league. Your registration fee of $40, the flyer informed me, covered the cost of a uniform T-shirt and a trophy at the end of the season.
I read the flyer a second time, puzzled at how you could buy a trophy.
If only I'd known then what I know now.
That was my first introduction to the 21st century parenting mantra: everyone gets a trophy.
Since then, I'm dismayed to say that I've bought many trophies, medals, and ribbons for my children.
You participated in school field day?
You were on the soccer team?
Came in last in the spelling bee? Have an award!
They've been flung at my children for every organized event they managed to show up to since they were tiny.
And all those years, I've felt extremely conflicted about it.
My kids don't even know what a trophy is. They think it's just what you get on the last gymnastics class of the session. They treat their Happy Meal toys with more reverence than all the medals they've won, probably because they're honestly harder to come by in my kids' eyes.
About 6 years after the tee-ball flyer incident, we decided to sign up one of our boys for his very first race. I'd personally rather spend 20 minutes staring directly at the sun than running for the pure enjoyment of it, but Phillip's into running and it's one of his "daddy" activities with the kids.
We found a nearby race with a kids' Fun Run, which we assumed meant 1 mile. On the day of the race, we found that the "Fun Run" was actually the silliest little 50-yard dash I'd ever seen (serves me right for not reading the fine print) and at the end every child was handed a shiny medal.
I was furious, and not just because we'd spent weeks training and psyching our son up for a race that was shorter than the distance from our front door to our mailbox.
Plastering on a big smile, I asked at the finish line, "So how was your very first race?"
His answer, as he brandished the medal at me, was exactly what I dreaded it would be: "It wasn't hard at all, Mom, and look what I got!"
And you know what? He was right. If he'd walked the entire course, or even if he'd laid down and taken a nap in the middle instead of finishing, he still would've gotten a medal.
But I'd wanted it to be hard. I wanted him to sweat and get tired and almost give up but persevere and be proud of himself for doing his best — with or without a medal. Meaningless awards can't replace actual achievement.
Kids aren't so dumb. You can't fool them into having higher self-esteem with a trophy. I cringe when my kids get awards they haven't worked hard to earn.
I hear that sentiment echoed a lot. This subject comes up often when moms get together, and I've never heard one good word about the now-standard practice of giving trophies just for participating.
Everyone shakes their head and agrees that it's terrible how medals and ribbons were once signs of great achievements and now they're just given out like Tic-Tacs.
So if everyone feels that way, then how did we get to this point? And why are we still doing it? Surely someone could say something.
And then I realize: I haven't said anything, either.
So this year I just might be the mom asking the head of the local youth soccer league not to give out participatory trophies on the last day of the season, but I don't have very high hopes. For a trend that no one likes, I have a feeling it'll be a hard one to eliminate.
It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! That means 7 quick thoughts for the last 7 days.
—1—
Sometimes I like to annoy my children on Friday mornings by singing "Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday" as they get ready for school. Luckily they think it's funny, rather than mortifying or just kinda sad, when their 32-year-old mother impersonates Rebecca Black. (The original video is here if you have no idea what I'm talking about.)
After listening to me sing, my 6-year-old said sagely to me, "If you get down on Friday, then you have to get back up on Saturday." I laughed so he kept repeating it, then amended it to add, "And boogie round and round on Sunday."
—2—
Speaking of "Friday," I thought this would be as good a place as any to share a few of my favorite "Friday" parodies. Take a look at these to see what a versatile song this can be:
And my kids, being huge Harry Potter fans, of course wanted me to include this one:
—3—
We're still adjusting to Daylight Savings Time at our house. If you're reading this from Arizona or some country where they don't do DST, don't even talk to me. It's been a rough, cranky, tired week over here.
I have a funny Daylight Savings Time story, though. One year when we "fell back," I was running an hour late for 3 days before I realized the time had changed. This was years ago, when my oldest wasn't in school yet. We showed up at a friend's house that Tuesday at what I thought was noon, and she threw open the door saying, "We were so worried! Are you okay?"
Ironically, I'd been thinking just before she answered the door how especially proud of myself I was for getting there on time!
—4—
In commemoration of the Jewish holiday of Purim, my daughter's best friend's synagogue held a Purim Spiel over the weekend. It was a play retelling the story of Queen Esther saving the Jews, only super-silly. And I mean ruh-diculous.
They told the Purim story by changing the words to pop songs by Abba and Lady Gaga; the people in the story were dressed up like Darth Vader and the Wicked Witch of the West, and Esther was played by a man in a dress!
It was certainly a unique experience all around, but I think I'll probably never forget Haman (the king's wicked advisor who wanted to kill all the Jewish people) portrayed as Oscar the Grouch in full costume in a trash can, singing "I Hate Jews" to the tune of "I Love Trash." I'll never hear that song the same way again.
—5—
Phillip came home from a trip for work, and I walked into our room to find that someone had filled his emptied-out suitcase on the bed with a toy laptop, a toy cell phone, and other essentials:
My preschooler appears to be preparing to run away from home. Should I be worried?
The culprit was my 3-year-old, who's taken to carrying that pink plastic flip-phone with her in her coat pocket at all times. I caught her the other day walking around the house pushing the camera button — she told me she was taking pictures for my blog.
—6—
Look up. No, not at the ceiling. At the URL bar. Notice anything different?
When Unremarkable Files set up shop here in September, I made a deal with myself that as soon as I made enough money from this blog to buy it its very own domain name, I would.
This week I was thrilled to have my post "Why I Take My Kids to Church" syndicated on BlogHer, which is a paying gig. So I made good on my promise and from now on you can come visit me at www.unremarkablefiles.com (no more of this 'dot-blogspot' business.)
—7—
Today's self-esteem boosting moment brought to you by my 3-year-old: one of my girls desperately needed socks so we made a quick stop at Kmart. My 3-year-old knows I've been shopping in vain for pants for the last several months, so she asked "You want to try on some pants, Mama?"
"No, not this time," I answered. (I was busy searching for the best price in a huge wall display of 7 billion pairs of socks.)
"Okay," she said. "You need some biiiiiiig pants, cuz you're a biiiiiiiig mom!"
I didn't realize it would mean that every link you clicked with the old unremarkablefiles.blogspot.com
address would take you to a scary-looking redirect message. I'm working on updating all the links, but it's pretty annoying and will take some time.
Because my kids have to eat and stuff.
In the meantime, embrace the change and start using my new address. And if you see any funky redirect messages from Blogger, just click through: I promise I won't try to infect your computer with viruses or sell you Viagra.
We all get excited for those famous firsts in our children's lives: first word, first step, first day of school. But there are some firsts that really aren't so fun for parents.
1. First blowout diaper. In public. When you have two wipes left in the diaper bag. 2. First time your child lies down screaming on the floor in T.J. Maxx and refuses to get up. Probably because she wanted to pick the shopping cart and you chose the wrong one.
3. First poop in the bathtub. Bonus points if this occurs while you're bathing other siblings at the same time.
4. First attempt at explaining to a preschooler what a tampon is. He found one in your purse, and he just won't stop asking "why."
5. First night cleaning vomit out of bed sheets (and carpet, and clothing, and hair...)
6. First time your kids miss the school bus. Your only chance at a shower disappeared along with the yellow bus vanishing over the horizon. Now you have time to either brush your teeth or change out of your pajama pants before driving your kids to school — but not both.
7. First math homework that you honestly can't help with because you don't understand a word of it. It'll happen sooner than you think it will.
8. First phone call from another parent about something awful your child did. This call will come precisely at a time when you're already feeling like a walking parenting fail, and it will really make your day. Trust me.
9. First time finding a dried booger on the wall. Of course your child won't admit to picking her nose or to wiping it on the wall. At least she didn't eat it.
10. First time you realize that your parents were right. About everything. And as predicted by your mother, you see that you've ended up with a child exactly like you were.
Yesterday was the beginning of Daylight Savings Time — or as I call it, National "Be an Hour Late to Church" Day. As a parent, when I see Daylight Savings Time coming up on my calendar, my soul wails "Oh, the humanity!" like Herbert Morrison witnessing the Hindenburg bursting into flames.
Call me melodramatic, but it's pretty inhumane to subject already sleep-deprived parents to this horror show twice a year.
Whether it's "springing forward" or "falling back," we lose at least an hour of sleep and have cranky children for a week afterward while they adjust.
This time around, it went exactly as expected. We put kids to bed who weren't tired yet on Saturday night, took slightly groggy children to church on Sunday, and did everything short of a voodoo ceremony to drag them out of bed for school this morning.
And I couldn't blame them, I felt the same way.
Many parents who are more on top of things than I am gradually start "breaking in" their kids a week in advance, adjusting their bedtime by 10 minutes every night.
Truer words were never spoken.
It sounds lovely to never have a hitch in your tranquil life because of your superior skills in planning ahead, but since I can barely maintain enough foresight to get the laundry from the washing machine into the dryer before it starts to smell, this obviously isn't going to happen in our house.
I don't know who's in charge of time changes, but sometimes I picture approaching the paunchy, slightly balding Daylight Savings Commissioner (I made him up for visualization purposes,) and asking him why.
Not "why" as in an honest inquiry, but as an impassioned plea for this insanity to end.
I've heard that Daylight Savings Time originally had something to do with farming or conserving energy during WWII. But either way, we've got tractors with headlights now and the war's over, so it's pretty clear to me what needs to be done here.
Until the Commissioner starts to see some sense, I'll be busy compiling a list of countries that don't participate in Daylight Savings Time and researching real estate there. But really, I'll probably just end up taking a nap.
When my daughter was 6, she came home from school one day and announced that she wanted to start getting an allowance like her friend Molly.
Then she wanted to know what an allowance was.
A quick Google search confirmed that there are a hundred different approaches to handling allowance. I read a dozen or so articles, and the readers' comments confirmed that whichever way you choose, it's wrong and you're teaching your kids to become spoiled brats.
So I can't tell you The Right Way to do allowance, but I can tell you what I've observed through trial and error in our home and what ultimately worked for us.
Our kids do lots of chores, both paid and unpaid. But mostly unpaid. In our house, you'll never earn a dime for:
Basic self-maintenance like getting dressed, brushing your teeth, packing your school lunch, practicing the instrument you chose to play, or (when you reach the age of 8 or so) doing your laundry. That's just something you need to do because you're a person that's alive, not a job for which you deserve compensation.
Cleaning up after yourself. Messes in, around, or outside your room that you participated in making will be cleaned up for free. Because that's just part of not being a slob.
Family work. The kitchen and dining room are disasters because of the dinner that was made for you, so it goes without saying that you're going to help clean it up. You'll also take your turn unloading the dishwasher, dusting, cleaning bathrooms, taking out the recycling, emptying the trash, and everyday tidying up of common areas in the house. During the summer we also have a mandatory daily 30 minutes of "outside work" in the yard, just for fun. Or because we have a lot of weeds. One of the two.
That said, I want the kids to learn about earning money, so we have paid allowance chores, too.
But I think the kind of chores they get paid for are really crucial, and here's why:
Years ago, an acquaintance who did a lot of hiring for his tree removal business told me that a lot of his younger interviewees arrived feeling entitled to a job with him just because they wanted it. One day, he shocked a particular 18-year-old by leaning across the table and interrupting him. "I really don't care about how much you need this job," he said. "What can you do for me?" It was clear that the kid had never really considered it from that angle before. I don't think he got the job.
Fast forward several years later, and I was surprised to find that my own kids apparently had the same idea.
Around the time we first started batting around the idea of giving an allowance, I asked my daughter to pick up the avalanche of stuff that had exploded out of her backpack all over the hallway. Hopefully and immediately, she asked "Can that be my allowance chore for the day?"
It was clear that she thought I would (or should?) throw cash at her for any little task she found unpleasant. The idea of providing a valuable service in exchange for other people's money wasn't yet part of her thought process. It hadn't been learned yet.
That's why at our house, allowance chores are strictly personal "favors" for me, like folding my laundry, making my bed, or doing other household chores that I'd normally do myself without expecting the kids to lift a finger.
Some may call it cruel and unusual to farm my personal work off to the kids in the form of allowance chores, but I really think it's teaching them that earning money is different than being given money. The kids are learning that if you want someone to pay you, you need to provide them with a service worth paying for. That's what I like about our allowance chore system.
That, and I also get out of folding my laundry and making my bed on a regular basis.
