Tonight, the second to last night of 2012, the girls are watching a movie upstairs, my husband is playing cards with friends, the dog is stretched out on the chair and I am half-watching tv, half-perusing the internet.

Last night, two of our nephews spent the night. They happily played with legos, ate pizza, colored, watched a movie, devoured pancakes, ran circles around the kitchen, ate lunch and went home. The younger of the two fell asleep in the car on the way back to his house. Just how we like them, full bellies and exhausted.

It has been a good year. We have welcomed a brother-in-law and four nieces to our ever-expanding family and said goodbye to a dear family friend after a painful - and thankfully - short battle with cancer.

We welcome 2013 without any negativity, with only good thoughts and plans, with happy, healthy hearts and a good balance for life.

Our dear sweet darling seven year old has asked some hard questions lately.

 

Why do they bury people in clothes?

 

Because an open casket at a funeral would be really weird if the person that died was naked. (laugh) Funerals aren’t really so much for the person that had died as the people that are left behind. It helps people feel a little bit better about someone dying and having to bury someone they love if they know that the person is buried in a certain sweater that they really liked. It’s kind of the last picture in their minds they will have of the person that died. We talked about the high school girl in a nearby town that had been very sick. When she died, she was buried in her dance uniform and it probably helped the people that loved her know that she was buried wearing something that she really loved and was happy when she danced.

 

Why would someone spend thousands of dollars just to bury someone? ‘Cause in “Nanny McPhee” the dad puts dead people in clothes. (in the movie, the dad is a mortician)

 

Well, there are rules about where and how a person can be buried. Kind of like when you build a house, the basement has to be put in the ground in a certain way so that the dirt around it doesn’t have any problems and the basement is protected. Burying people is the same kind of idea. The state requires certain kinds of containers to protect the body and the dirt around it. Remember, that there are different ways to bury people. You can use a casket or you can cremate the body – which, remember is a really hot fire that turns the body (and the clothes) into ashes like a campfire. If you have someone cremated, you can bury the ashes and will have to follow some of the same rules as burying a casket. You can also put the ashes in a pretty box or vase and keep it in your house. Remember, at Rob & Teresa’s house they have a pretty container with the ashes of their dog that died and was cremated. “that’s kind of creepy” “yes, it is”

 

Is Santa real? ‘Cause my friends say that it’s just your parents buying stuff. (after the approximately 15^th time she has asked this question in the last month and we’re waiting in the driveway because we can hear sirens in the distance of the fire truck that takes Santa around our little town – which we must have missed because we could hear but not see the fire truck)

 

Oh, honey. I know this isn’t what you want to hear - no Santa is not real. A very long time ago in Europe there was a man named Nicholas who gave things to people who were not able to buy them. It became a tradition that people surprised others with gifts that could not buy them for themselves. And that became a tradition of showing people how much you care about them by surprising them with a gift. Santa is an idea, it is a happy tradition of love and giving that was started a very long time ago, and when people moved from Europe to our country they brought the tradition along. It is a way for family and friends to give presents to the people they care about. It is a way to give to people charity where the people receiving might be embarrassed that they need help – and the people giving want to be able to show their love and how much they care about people. Remember when we bought the toy for my work? It’s going to a family that cannot afford to buy their children presents so we kind of got to be Santa for that family. It is also important to keep the tradition going and not spoil the surprise for other people. I named off some younger cousins and explained that it’s really nice to be surprised so to make sure and keep the tradition going – that it is a part of being a family.

 

Just when I think, why doesn’t Erik get some of these hard questions? She came up with “Where do babies come from, how do they get made, really?” for him in the car after school and he was trapped.

 

Erik handled this one with a rather scientific description and she seemed okay with the answer – for now. Hopefully that will hold her for awhile - who knows when she’ll want more information on the subject.

Raising daughters, raising Mom

How do you know if you are giving the right information? How do you know if your kind, sweet, smart, lovely pre-teen daughter is giving you the right information?

What do I wish that I had heard at her age from friends, family, teachers? What does she want to hear from me?

How do I know that she is making friends with the 'right' girls? How does she know?

This parenting thing is hard, and it's getting harder. The late night feedings and diaper changes were hard but this is new territory. When a baby wakes in the night, you go through the drill, is she: wet, dry, hungry, sick, lonely?

The pre-teen sobbies happen anytime day or night and it's a whole new drill, and the list of possibilities is much different, is she: upset, happy, sad, mad, frustrated, tired, hungry? What is the source, school, homework, rules, friends, enemies, family, the weather, the dog, her favorite shirt in the laundry, ipod needs charged, out of granola bars and chocolate yogurt again?!

When she was a baby, the routine was: new diaper, bottle, hum a song and rock-rock-rock-rock until you get the heavy, relaxed, sleepy baby feel. Now, it's a big hug, a kleenex, a drink and stand/sit there and listen as long as it takes to calm down and offer a few words of 'wisdom'.

The science fan in me loves this description of tears:

“tears are [our] body’s release valve for stress, sadness, grief, anxiety, and frustration…they lubricate your eyes, remove irritants, reduce stress hormones, and they contain antibodies that fight pathogenic microbes.” Dr. Judith Orloff, Psychology Today

 

The Mom in me reads this description to say, that tears are necessary. Whether your baby is 11 days or 11 1/2 years, they need to let the tears flow.

 

I'm the first to admit that I'm just winging it here, not really sure what I'm doing or if I'm screwing it all up big-time. The secret of it all is that 'children thrive in spite of their mothers' (Thank you, Grandma Harkin). It's going to be okay if I just wing it, it's okay if I don't have all of the answers. The intent to be a good parent is there, and I try to not screw it up too much. The next 10 years or so are going to be hard on her, hard on me, somedays hard on anyone in earshot.

One of our favorite ways to have dinner as a family is to break out a large platter, fill it with fruit, veggies, cheese, meat, crackers or bread and place it on the ottoman (or outside on the front step). We sit on the floor and dig in, together, no plates, no forks, no tv, no music. Just enjoy the meal and company. I’m not sure if it’s the unorthodox dining method or the location but it makes for an exciting and chatty meal. Maybe it’s that we are all on the floor, at the same level. Katy labeled this event Fruity Friday, even if it’s on a Tuesday. Fruity Friday is typically completed by a rousing edition of “what is” – as in “what is your favorite animal?” “what is the best time of day?” and“what is your favorite color?” We go around the ottoman and usually end up giggling at the answers.

Katy is moving up to the big scary middle school this fall and for the month of May the 5^th grade is having a practice run at 6^th grade. They have padlocks on their lockers and move from class to class with different children for 4 class periods. With just 4 minutes to get from one class to the next they are carrying books with them and using a bell system for class dismissals. She thinks middle school is exciting and cannot wait to get there. It’s admittedly a little scary for me.

At nearly 7 years old, Miss Gretch has taken to a monkey. It’s a stuffed one that went through a bit of an identity crisis but eventually settled on the name Bananas. Saturday night a sleepy Gretchen came to my bed-side scared of a spidery dream. I told her to go back to bed and try to think about something else and got up to let the dog out. When I walked back upstairs she was in the hallway saying “it didn’t work” so I walked her to bed, tucked her in and explained that monkeys eat spiders and other kinds of bugs so Bananas would protect her. “Oh, okay,” she said dreamily, rolled to her side with Bananas snug under her arm and was suddenly sleeping with a faint smile on her little rosebud mouth.

Between the moments of frustration and repeated directions, of ‘what were you thinking’ and ‘how do you think that makes her feel’ are snapshots of our little family just being. I understand that the frustration and other things that are not fun are part of our family also, but it’s the little moments that I cherish. Sitting around the ottoman having dinner, chatter from the backseat about this friend and that, and quieting a bad dream with the assurance that everything would be alright.

These days are numbered. Gretchen will be 7 next month and Katy turns 11 in June. For years we have teasingly celebrated ‘only 12 more years and they’ll be out of the house!’ around their birthdays. It won’t be long and they’ll turn the table on it and start celebrating how many years until they get to move out.

Guidance

The girls and I had been playing cards last night, a marathon of Go Fish and Uno, and I sent them to get ready for bed at about 8:10. Katy sat back down on our bed and spilled her guts. She had forgotten to finish a project over the weekend, saw the teacher's reaction to another student who also did not finish the project, and was scared and embarrassed at the thought of receiving the same reaction in fron of the entire class. The next morning it would be her turn to describe her project and turn it in. She had not finished the hot list (which sounds like a reference page) and had yet to develop a game to go along with the research topic (turns out there is a software program that will build a crossword or word find puzzle if you enter in the questions and answers - who knew?).

Apparently, there was a substitute for most of last week for this particular teacher and the substitute did not instruct the class to work on the project. I asked about the teacher's reaction to the student who also did not finish the project and she described it through tears.

Part of me wanted to be the Momma Bear and say it wasn't fair, that expecting 10-11 year old children to keep track of the deadline for project during a weeklong absence of their teacher and to take the initiative to complete it outside of class was a bit much. I wanted to berate the teacher for leaving insufficient lesson plans for the substitute, who according to Katy told the students just read each day in this class. That surely if these children are expected to finish the project on their own that the substitute could have provided this message to the students and even supervised their work. I had to think of the bigger picture, that this was Katy's interpretation of what happened and not necessarily the whole truth.

It was time to take a step back, take a deep breath and get Katy to stop sobbing so that we could have a conversation. It went something like this.

It is true that it is your responsibility to finish your school work. You know what reaction the teacher had today to a student who had not completed the project and you can probably expect about the same reaction tomorrow. [it's okay, take a deep breath, have a kleenex and a drink of water]

Let's make a plan. How are you going to complete the project tomorrow?

She said that she could work on the project during recess and that if she talked to the band teacher that she could work on it instead of going to band. Okay, if you have not completed the project by the end of the school day, stay after school to finish it and send Dad a text message asking him to pick you up later. [no, no, I promise he won't be mad, I'll talk to him] This snowballed into Katy saying that she likes band and honor choir but maybe she shouldn't go to them so that she could have study hall instead.

Okay, one thing at a time. You have to be honest and up front with this teacher. Tell her that you have not completed the project and explain your plan to complete it today. If she has the same reaction to you as it sounds like she did to another student, remain calm and agree with her that yes, it was ultimately your responsibility to complete the project.

Then she asked what if she cries and everyone sees her. [broke my heart a little so I had to get gross for perspective] Well, you are going to walk into the classroom and talk to the teacher right away. It's not like you are going to stand up in front of everyone and vomit, you aren't going to have explosive diarrhea or something nasty like that. [she laughs through her tears and gives me a 'oh Mom that's just gross'] Yeah, see, it could be a lot worse.

You are going to cry, big deal. You are worried about how this is all going to work out and it's okay to let emotion out by crying. Then I got to her level and quoted Taylor Swift (genius on my part!). How does the song go? "You'll do greater things in your life than date a boy on the football team." Honey, you are going to screw up so much bigger in your life than not finishing a project on time. You are going to run into things with your first car [she laughs], you are going to screw up big time at some point in your life. Let's learn the lesson and move on.

The class starts at 10:30, I'll be watching the clock and hoping that it goes well.