That's the Pits!

Today, I watched my seven year old daughter execute the wardrobe-change-while-riding-in-a-car maneuver.

We left her soccer game, where she displayed 2 scissor moves, one fake, one thigh trap, five right footed-goals, 1 left-footed goal, and 1 left-footed shot on goal, and she had to do a quick transformation before getting to her next destination, a birthday party.  Before we pulled away from the curb, she had changed out of her soccer shorts and into her cute little cut-off jean shorts.  Next, the sweaty soccer jersey was whipped off, replaced by a sassy little pink t-shirt, complete with rhinestone doohickeys on the front.  She topped it off with a black half-length vest, and then set about brushing her hair as the van careened down the hill towards the party.

I kept sneaking glances at her in the rearview mirror.  She was "doing herself up," as much as a 7 year old  can, transforming herself from rabid athlete to bounce-house party girl.  It was poignant.  I pictured her older, and found myself hoping that soccer grows up with her and stays with her into high school.  Having never been an athlete as a child, I love the idea of my girls challenging themselves physically, pushing their bodies and growing up strong.  Visions of prom night swirled in my head, with a dazzling Lady E dressed to the nines after a fierce competition on the pitch.  I don't want her to be a debutante or anything, but I like that she's got both going for her.  I kept sneaking glances at her as she brushed and brushed her unbrushable mop, and I smiled to myself all the while.

She was worried about being sweaty.  "Mom, when we get there, I'm going to use the bathroom first, so I can wash my hands and face, and my pits, Mom, because my pits are gross!"  Emphasis hers.

Happy as I was about her taking care of her personal hygiene, I  gently suggested that she couldn't actually bathe in her host's bathroom, and that it would probably be fine to just wash her hands and face.  After all, I figured, she's seven.  And she's going straight into a bouncy house with a bunch of other seven and eight year olds, where they will bounce like mad for 2 or 3 hours.  It's not like the pits are going to matter.

When we got to the party, we found our way through an immaculate, show-ready house, said hello to the hosts, then we found our way to a gorgeous bathroom, with cute little soaps, pretty towels, and matching everything.  I re-did her un-doable hair.  She washed up.  Washed her face and hands, and reached for the towel to dry up.   And just as I was marveling at how extremely lovely she is, and before I could reach over to stop her, she took that nice pretty hand towel and mopped up both her pits.

I'm pretty sure the rough and tumble athlete is going to kick the debutante's ass in this little girl.

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7 Quick Takes: Volume 54

7 works of art, all made on this lovely Friday.

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7 Quick Takes: Volume 53

Let's be quick about this shall we?  Here are my 7 Quick Takes for today.  Actually 14, because today, I bring you 2 lists of seven things that reveal a little bit about me and my family.

List #1:

1. The other day, I was lying down on my bed with my daughter.  She looked down at my feet, looked back up at me, gave me a little sly smile and said:  "Look at you, wearing the matching socks!"
2. I organized my desk piles yesterday.  I found a Netflix DVD we have not returned.  From December.  Of 2010.
3. My kids sometimes lament: "We're the Heck's, aren't we?"  
4. Related: One of my kids, surveying the scene after we stayed at grandma and poppa's house for three days and were about to begin the process of putting it back together, said: "I know what happened here.  We Alatorre-ed up the place."
5. I had to dry a school uniform shirt with a hair blow-dryer this morning.
6. Every day, it takes about 3.4 seconds for the car ride home from school to reach epic levels of nastiness between my children.  When this happens, I worry that they are actually possessed by evil spirits.  Every day.
7. I finally found one of the three flash drives I've been looking for!  Outside, in a dirty bucket, partially submerged in rainwater.  Along with it, I also found one bottle of expensive facial sunscreen, a couple of necklaces, a soaked deck of cards, and my kitchen dish scrubber.  The dish scrubber did not survive.

List #2

1. My husband can simultaneously agree with my son, in the most emphatic way, that a kid we know is an absolute idiot (replace the word "idiot" with your preferred curse word; I couldn't bring myself to pull that trigger) while also telling him that even that kid deserves adults who will bring out the best in him, because "you never give up on a 13-year old kid."
2. A couple of times recently, when they had their choice of what movie to watch, my kids picked To Kill a Mockingbird and Guess Whose Coming To Dinner.  
3. Four out of my five children will be in a production of Midsummer Night's Dream this summer in Sonoma.  
4. My dining room table is covered with evidence that art takes places all the time in this house.  I could sand it all away any time I choose.  I do not choose.
5. The other day, someone asked me "how I do it," how do I handle 5 kids.  I replied quite sincerely that I yell a lot.  She, bless her, expressed disbelief: "No!  I don't believe that!  It seems like you laugh a lot!"  Well, both are true.  And I was grateful to her for pointing out to me that, yes, we laugh a lot.
6. Every  now and then, the stars line up correctly, everyone's moons are in the right aspect, our chakras jive with our karma, and the five kids all have fun playing together, from the 13 year old, all the way down to the 5 year old.  Not going somewhere fun, not for a special occasion, just because we get lucky.  When this happens, like it did last night on a warm and beautiful Spring evening, with children rolling on the lawn and the sounds of their merriment wafting down our street, I marvel that my children are kind, fun, creative, hilarious, and strong people.   (It didn't last very long...but it was glorious.)
7. Things I love about my family: that we are Barcelona fans...that we make paella...that we love the Beatles...that we talk ad nauseum about life...that we all give each other second chances every single morning (so, like, second chances times infinity, or something like that)...that we all possess very strong senses of humor...that we are here, in this place, with and for each other.  I never doubt that a small group of Alatorres can change the world.  Indeed, it's the only thing that does it for me, day in and day out.  (Sorry 'bout the stealing, Ms. Mead!)

We give me whiplash.

:) Happy Friday everyone.  Go visit our host, Jen, and sample some of the other 7QT-ers.  

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It Only Took Me 9.75 Years

My daughters are rough and tumble.  They are hard on clothes, hair accessories, and their own bodies.  I try to dress them up, I try to "do" their hair.  It usually takes mere minutes for them to revert back to their natural state: unkempt, with holes at the knees.  Cute hair bands unravel at their touch.  Pretty blouses are christened with paint or mud or both within days.  I've used more bandaids on my three daughters in nine years than I have on my two boys in thirteen.

I had a realization this morning as I was searching for a non-shredded pair of tights for Thing One to wear.  All this time I've thought I was buying tights for my daughters, pondering which ones to buy, trying to keep them organized in a cute and tidy little stocking basket, I haven't actually been buying tights.  I've been buying disposable socks.

It stops now.  No more wasted money.  No more standing and staring in the Target aisle.  I'm taking a stand against tights.  No more tights.

I'll find something else to do with that cute basket.  Maybe I'll keep my Y2K supply of bandaids in there.

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Fun With Sharpees

Give my kids a relatively free afternoon and a couple of sharpees, and there's no end to the fun they can have.

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It Takes A Village To Keep Me From Whacking You Upside the Head

Monday morning is challenging enough without parent-child clashes, right?  Unfortunately, my Monday morning featured all the usual challenges, plus a side of Teen Drama.

You see, when we arrived at school, my teenager discovered he had left his lunch at home.  I reacted with all the grace of a grumpy mother bear whose cub has spilled honey all over the cave.  He got defensive and teenager-y on me, and somehow, magically, it was my fault that he hadn't grabbed his lunch.

So the two of us are walking up the hill to school hissing disgruntled comments back and forth, each of us unhappy with the other, I because he'd forgotten his lunch and he because I was on his case and in his business again.  We walked about 20 or 30 paces this way, essentially bickering.  Let me be a cautionary tale: do not bicker with your own child.  It's pointless and soul-sucking.  For both of you.  But bicker we did, right up to the school steps.

But then, we encountered two other people, another parent and another student.  And BAM!  Insta-Cheer!  

One minute we were both grousing and grumbling away at each other, and the very next minute, we were chatting pleasantly with our respective friends about our weekends.  Sam was telling his friend about his awesome guitar recital on Saturday night and I was joking with the mom on crossing guard duty like I hadn't a care in the world.  It was like we were two entirely different people than the grumpy-grumps we had been seconds earlier.

Is that fake?  Are we hypocritical when we change faces so fast and act like everything is hunky-dory when we kind of want to strangle each other?

I don't think so.  I think it's more like sweet mercy that other people come along and bring us out of our private little miseries and invite us to something better.  Thank goodness we are not left alone with our petty concerns and complaints!

Apparently, it takes a village to keep a mother and teenager from killing each other.

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Moo Saves the Day

It's been a wild, wet day here in the San Francisco Bay Area.  A day with a few teen/parent clashes.  A day of locking the keys in the car.  A day of pulling weeds in between rain showers.  A day of disappointing soccer game cancellations.

I arrive at the end of the day tired, and a little bewildered by the craziness that is my life.  I'm feeling a little low, a little regretful, but I can't say of what.  I feel a certain mopey malaise creeping over me as I drag my sorry self up to bed.  Sigh.  Whimper.  Whaaaaaa.

And there on my pillow is this:

And inside the card (on which, if you look closely, is painted the word 'love' in silver puffy paint) is this:

And inside the box is this:

A heart shaped rock, found in the garden and painted just for me.

If you are ever feeling a little underappreciated, or a little ineffectual, or a little weary of the demands of daily life, let me just say that having someone thank you for their life, their awesome life, really helps.

Her nickname is Moo; her gifts are invaluable.

Going to bed peaceful and happy now.

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7 Quick Takes: Volume 52

We're very very busy and we've got a lot to do

And we haven't got a minute to explain it all to you

For on Sunday Monday Tuesday there are people we must see

And on Wednesday Thursday Friday we're as busy as can be

With our most important meetings and our most important calls

And we have to do so many things and post them on the walls.

This song, Busy Busy Busy, by Sandra Boyton, sorta captures our lives of late.  Barely time to stop and breathe.  (Do you know Philadelphia Chickens?  Oh, you must!)

So for today's Quick Takes, I bring you the antidote to being too busy.  Here are seven things that have made me smile over the past week or so.   Please visit Jen, our 7QT Host, and sample the links of other QT-ers.

~1~

Fun with schoolwork!

~2~

Found one late night...

~3~

Close up of our 4th First Communion banner

~4~

Creativity.

~5~

More creativity.

~6~

Cousins playing music together

~7~

Um, hello?  Weren't you just born like five minutes ago?

Find the things that make you smile.  Never be too busy for that.

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Ah, Spring!

The poet Mary Oliver has been popping up around me lately, in conversations and things overheard, on the web and from my bookshelf.  This morning, she popped up on The Writer's Almanac, with a lovely poem perfect for the beginning of Spring.  Listen: the poem comes at the end of the Almanac.



Happy Vernal Equinox!

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Blame It On Lego Man

I think I finally figured out why we go through toilet paper so fast!

I happened upon this scene late last night, after all the potential culprits had long since been fast asleep.  From the look on his face, it appears this guy doesn't approve of my choice of tissue.

Note to self: stop feeding the legos.

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Books and Stuff

Yesterday was Dress Like A Book Character day at my kids' school.  We had Ponyboy (The Outsiders), Annabeth (Percy Jackson series), Bean (Ivy and Bean), and Thing One (do I really need to tell you where Thing One comes from?).  And one non-participator.  Thing One was a pathetic case of typecasting.

I tried to get one of the girls to be Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird, but apparently, they just don't do overalls anymore.  That's sad, don't you think?  No one should ever be too cool for overalls.  No one.

Anyway, later in the morning, I listened to Your Call Radio, on KALW, and the topic was childrens' literature.  Among many interesting items, the guests discussed two resources I am sharing here because I think they might be of interest to anyone with kids.

The first is a website, called Guys Read, that is all about promoting reading for boys.  I have two guys here, ages 13 and 11, so I perked up when I heard about it.  My boys are both "sort of readers."  They have both read books that they couldn't put down.  They both love it when we read aloud together as a family.  But they also have many less worthy distractions competing for their attention.  Their iPods (why did we give them those damn things?), their video games (majorly regrettable decision on our part), and beating up on each other, to name a few.  So I'm looking forward to trolling around on the Guys Read site and discovering more ways to help my sons become life-long readers.

The second is the Campaign for a Commerical-Free Childhood.  Now this is a campaign I can get behind.  Their mission is to reclaim childhood from corporate marketers: could there be anything more important than that?  My kids have already heard me rant for years about product placement and cross-marketing: these people are speaking my language!  Did you know that there are over 70 product promotions in the movie The Lorax?  The movie my kids will get to see this weekend?  More than 70 products are using Dr. Suess's environmental love song to get us to consume more stuff.  That's just twisted.  CCFC is sponsoring an upcoming Screen Free Week, April 30-May 6, and if you click on that link, you can download free a guide to help you organize your own.  I can't wait to make my kids do this.  As soon as I break the news, I'm sure they'll be on Google, searching for things like "How can I figure out if I was separated at birth from the mother who really loves me?" or "What to do when your parents are bats."  Should be a real hoot.  Whose with me?

I actually called in to the radio show to tell the guests about Dress Like A Book Character Day and also to recommend two childrens' books: A Time of Wonder and One Morning in Maine, both by Robert McCloskey of Make Way for Ducklings fame.  Then, I actually got on the air, and got all nervous and babbled like an idiot, and repeated myself, and said the same thing over and over, and barely got off the phone with my dignity intact.  But what I wanted to say was this: both of those books are longer than you might be looking for after a long day and with bedtime within spitting distance.  But the time we spent reading those books to our kids when they were little tinies was some of the best time we've spent ever.  So if you haven't tried them, please do.  They both have this magical effect on children, rendering them alert, engaged, calm, and peaceful.

Hmmm...maybe it's time to re-read them to Thing One.

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