It has been an extremely challenging parenting week around here. Let me be clear: Carla is a fantastic kid and I love her with all my heart and feel so lucky to be her mom. And also, a lot of the time, I feel completely unfit to parent her. Yes, yes, I know – we’ve got the bases of food, shelter, and love covered, so we’re already ahead of the game. But I spend a lot of time, especially when things are tricky, feeling like I am doing her a grave disservice by being her primary source of guidance. (My husband is a wonderful father to whom parenting seems to come much more naturally/with less anxiety; he is just, by nature of his job, not with her as often as I am. And, much as I’d LOVE to, I can’t simply direct my child to wait for her father to come home to be parented, you know?) (Or CAN I?????)
My husband, after I’d leaked tears all over him immediately upon his arrival home from work yesterday, said kindly that he thinks every parent feels this way. I am pretty sure some of us (cough cough me) are simply inept. Developmentally appropriate challenges or not, I feel like I am flailing around without any idea how to help my kid.
Anyway, I am going to distract myself by turning to a problem I CAN solve, maybe, which is that I need a new hair dryer.
My now-dead hair dryer was this medieval torture-looking device by Drybar and I really liked it. It made my hair smoother and less frizzy than the standard Conair I use as a backup. I could operate it one-handed, which left my other hand free to turn the pages in my book or choose invariably wrong answers in my daily French lesson. I also think it tamed my wavy hair much better than a regular hair dryer, which always seems to leave a few ripples near the crown of my head. In fact, on days when my hair was being particularly accommodating, I didn’t even need to use a straightener.
When I bought it, I had never spent more than $50 on a hair dryer, and it seemed so ridiculously expensive. But now that I am considering a new hair dryer, I see that it is quite reasonable. In terms of pricey hair dryers, of course. I could just use AIR, which is FREE.
A very good friend of mine – and a person with what I consider to possess the platonic ideal hair – said that this combo straightener/dryer, while spendy, is worth every penny because it dries and straightens simultaneously, no need for a separate straightening device. I mean, if it would transform my hair into hers, I would buy it in a heartbeat. Like, a horrified, “am I really spending this much money on a hair dryer” arrhythmic heartbeat, but still. However, I suspect that no hair implement could ever perform that magic. Her hair is supernaturally beautiful.
If I’m going for brand name, there is the slightly less-expensive Dyson… but I have no idea what superpowers it claims and I feel too exhausted by, you know, everything, to look into it.
1. For Valentine’s Day, I made twokinds of cookies. I had some leftover scraps of dough, so I cut out little hearts and whipped up a strawberry buttercream frosting and made little sandwiches. They were cute and tasty. Then I added a few cookies to these adorable plates I found at the grocery store of all places and gave them to a couple of local friends.
My husband and I exchanged cards and candy and we got Carla a bunch of candy and a little pink bunny. (Side note: I happened to be near a Kohl’s recently and went in, remembering the luck I’d had finding stocking stuffers there. They had one tiny Valentine’s Day display and the rest of the holiday products were related to Easter. And not just bunnies — they had a strange array of large, weary-looking pigs, which seems a little odd for Easter. I mean, I would look weary if I were a stuffed animal on display in a Kohl’s too, that’s gotta be a hard job, but they were not particularly cute or cuddly and really seemed like they were counting the hours until they could clock out. I DID find one small, pink bunny and snapped it up.) Carla also cut out a bunch of paper hearts and stuck them all over the walls of the house. It was adorable and the hearts are still up and may remain for months.
2. A recent parent interaction has me feeling cranky. And ranty, just to warn you. I was at a school event and several of us were discussing various challenges our kids are having, as one does, and the topic turned to leaving our kids at home alone. I was struck, once again, by how adamant some people are that their way is The Only Way. The comments ran the spectrum from, “Oh my gosh, I would NEVER leave a kid that age alone!” to “There is NO REASON a kid that age can’t stay at home by themselves for reasonable periods of time.” With equal emphasis and near outrage.
I don’t know why, after nearly eleven years of being a parent, I am still surprised by people’s inability to consider the wide array of differences in our situations, upbringings, and specific children, but I guess I am. I’m guilty of it too – I still cringe, remembering how I’d mentioned to a friend that I OF COURSE make my child sit in the back seat because the American Pediatric Association says it’s best to have them sit in the backseat until age 13… and then she’d gently noted that her child is not yet 13 and sits in the passenger seat. Gah. When I KNOW that she is a wonderful, thoughtful parent and also know that MANY of my kid’s cohort sit in the front seat of their parents’ cars, for a wide variety of reasons I cannot begin to know because I am not them. (ALSO, lest you have a moment of panic about your own car-seating choices, the APA data on why age thirteen is a magical turning point for kids suddenly being safe to sit in the front seat is not super persuasive! I have read it!)
Okay – there are obviously some parenting choices that are less safe than others; if we’re talking about an infant in the front seat, that would be different; if we’re talking about a child riding in a car without restraints, that would be different. But there are SO MANY things that have NO SINGLE RIGHT WAY and yet some people seem incapable of understanding that there are many equally fine ways to do a thing.
This comes up every time I mention that my daughter needs melatonin to fall asleep. People have strong feelings about melatonin! As they should! And yet I have Reasons – and have carefully considered the angles and have consulted with multiple physicians and continually revisit whether it’s a good idea in our particular case for our particular child. It’s just so frustrating when someone says, “I would never give my kid melatonin” or “If she’s tired enough, she’ll fall asleep on her own” or “She clearly needs more physical activity during the day, that’ll help her sleep” as though they know.
And this happens with everything! I have had people scold me for allowing my child to wash her own hair. Does she do a great job? Not particularly. But am I weighing Other Factors? YES. The ways we judge one another are endless! Food – frequency, type, preparation. Buying clothing at Target vs upscale department stores. Bedtime. Age-appropriate chores/responsibilities. Sleepovers. Access to devices.
Screen time is a big one. For my particular kid, screens are a no-go on weekdays. There are REASONS for this. Do I despise screens? Not really, no. Would I love to be able to set her up with a TV show after school while I make dinner? Sure! Would it be much more convenient if I could say yes to her playing a video game after she does her homework? Definitely. BUT IT DOES NOT WORK FOR US. I have no concerns about YOUR family’s screen time choices. None! If your kid has unlimited screen time every day, I am sure that is a choice you made based on what’s best for your kid and your family. (Please note that I am aware too much screen time can have a negative impact on children. I am not advocating setting your three-year-old in front of a screen all day every day, although of course there are still probably Reasons someone might make that choice! Like if that is the only way you can work the job that allows you to feed your family or if you are so sick or pregnant you cannot do anything else or all sorts of other situations I know nothing about.) If you ask me about screen time for my kid, I am neither judging you for your own screen time limits nor inviting you to say, “Come on, an hour of Netflix after school isn’t going to hurt anyone.”
I know I cannot SOLVE this problem, and all I can do is surround myself with people who say things like, “This is what we have found works for us,” and who don’t make black-and-white accusatory statements about what I SHOULD and SHOULD NOT be doing without having all the information I am trying to balance, but I am SO SICK OF IT. Listen. I am not saying that I am completely free of judgment. We all judge one another, to some extent, because usually we think our choices are The Right Ones. But… I try really hard to acknowledge that we all have different value systems and different priorities and that, mostly, we are all trying our very best. Also, we can all judge one another SILENTLY. It is hard enough to be a parent, turning to other parents for support about choices that you have made based on Reasons but maybe you aren’t really sure are the BEST choices, as in my case with the melatonin, you are just doing the best you can with the information you have, without having someone who is not an expert, especially on YOUR CHILD, say you are Doing It Wrong.
Wow. I really got fired up about that. MOVING ON.
3. Accidental laundry efficiency hack? Laundry is my nemesis. I am pretty good about sorting the clothing into piles, and pretty good about putting the piles into the washing machine and washing them. I am less good about remembering to dry the freshly washed clothing, and then really terrible about folding the clothing. Yesterday, I had two loads of clean, dry laundry to fold and I was dreading it. I had a little more than twenty minutes before I needed to leave to pick up Carla from school and I just wanted to finish my book. So I made a deal with myself: I would set my timer for six minutes, and fold laundry until the timer went off. Then I would go read for fifteen minutes. Even a little progress on the laundry would make me feel better about it, I reasoned. Plus, sometimes if you get started on an onerous task, momentum will carry you through. I set my timer for six minutes, started folding… and FINISHED BOTH LOADS IN SIX MINUTES. How is that possible? In my head, folding laundry takes HOURS. But two loads took six minutes! (To be fair, I don’t fold all of Carla’s clothes, because a lot of them hang up in her closet. Also, I only put away my own laundry – my husband and Carla ostensibly move their clothes from my bed to their own drawers/hangers.) It was an astonishing and bolstering discovery. Has this new knowledge prompted me to fold the clean and dry load of laundry that is currently hanging out in the dryer? No, it has not.
4. How about a little mid-February giveaway? Amazon has issued me a refund for a product I did not return.I ordered a book and have not returned it; it’s right next to me as I type this. Nor have I returned anything else. And yet I got an email from Amazon saying they had processed my refund. I would like to pay for a product I received and kept, so I looked online at my options… and the only option I found (“cancel my return”) simply took me in a loop back to the returns page. I was able to chat with an associate, and they said I could keep the item. Seems like the perfect excuse to do a little giveaway. I have $14.40 in money that I should not have, which is the perfect amount for a paperback book that you’ve been meaning to read for a few years but haven’t gotten around to. If you want the chance to get a free paperback book, and are willing to share your address with me, let me know in the comments what backlist book you would order. I will randomly choose someone and send them the book of their choice, compliments of Amazon. Unfortunately, I will only be able to include US readers in this mini giveaway, which is a huge bummer. But if you are from outside the US, I am still interested in whatever backlist book you have been meaning to read but haven’t gotten to yet. Let’s say this giveaway is open until midnight on Monday, February 19 or until Feedly decides to say I wrote this post, whichever comes LAST.
5. I am suffering from home maintenance burnout. This past fall, when we moved to our new house, we had to do so many things, some elective, others more urgent… and I grew so very weary of all of them. But that doesn’t mean we are DONE with the home maintenance issues. I feel like they continue to pile up. This includes things I knew about last year that I intentionally put off until the spring (getting a tree cut back, finding a pool person, getting our air ducts cleaned, looking into the carpenter bees issue with our roof) as well as things that have cropped up in the interim (some electrical issues, a leak in our furnace, also our furnace is making a weird noise, our doorbell is caput). But I am having such a mental block to doing the things. Maybe if I write about it here, the guilt and self-consciousness will spur me to schedule at least one of them? Maybe I need to apply my laundry efficiency hack to making home maintenance phone calls, somehow? (Except they always drag on so much longer than they should, and require research and multiple phone calls and visits. This is part of the problem.)
That’s all I have for today, Internet. Hope you have a wonderful weekend!
Carla is, at this very moment, operating a library in our living room. She has made a circulation desk out of couch cushions and has brought down fabric bins from her room to hold books (we are not thinking about the current location of the original contents of the bins) (*cough cough* her bedroom floor) (nor are we thinking about how much less fun it is to dismantle a library than it is to create one). She has divvied up the books by category, which seem to be: Realistic Fiction, Fiction, Piggy & Gerald, and Non-Fiction. She has rounded up all of my library books, from the real library, to use in her offerings. She has her (my old) laptop on the circulation desk and created a Google doc in which she typed the title of every book on her shelves. She has created personalized “photo” library cards for her critters. And now her stuffed animals are asking her for recommendations and checking things out. I already checked out Anastasia Krupnik and read two chapters out loud to the librarian, who sometimes still sucks her thumb.
Not sure why one of the patrons is being used as a step stool, but we all do our part to encourage reading I suppose.
Carla is at this wonderful age between Little Kid and Tween. She’s got all these responsibilities and behaviors of a big kid, and yet she still loves playing make believe and she still has that childlike wonder and delight in the world around her that transforms my heart into a big neon sign pulsing behind my ribcage.
The little round thing on the right is the library card scanner; the black lamp illusion box is the book scanner. I’m not sure which cat is checking out Little House in the Big Woods, but I hope they won’t argue about it. Not the line of library users waiting their turn to check out.
She had to accompany me to the grocery store this morning because my husband is at the hospital. Call Week bleh. Big as she is, I am just not ready to leave her at home alone for an extended period of time. (My husband and I left her alone for about 30 minutes once, while we went to pick up takeout, and that seemed both fine and terrifying.) She was initially extremely grumpy about being dragged along to the store. Who can blame her, really.
Each cat has her own library card.
But almost as soon as we went inside, she became quite cheerful and inquisitive. She wanted to push the cart, which she can (mostly) do now without ramming into displays or other shoppers. She asked me what various things were (kumquats, delicata squash, figs) and pointed with glee at the baby artichokes and requested we buy many, many types of fruit (yes: kiwi, plums, blueberries, mango, grapefruit; no: whole coconut, pie pumpkin). I love being able to say yes to her at the grocery store, and I was able to say yes a lot: to two types of yogurt (yes, child! Ask for ALL the yogurt!), to a pumpkin roll from the bakery, to a package of mini stroopwaffles (to share with her father), to packages of frozen cherries and frozen raspberries.
There was a brief mishap in the refrigerated case that holds things like Pilsbury bread and cinnamon rolls. We were in the rice/quinoa/grains aisle, and the case was at the end of it, and all of a sudden a bunch of cylinders tumbled to the floor. Carla ran to help, along with multiple grocery store staff members, and informed them cheerfully that it “just collapsed out of nowhere!” (I really hope they saw that she was not anywhere nearby when this happened. It really was one of those moments of invisible chaos.) As we walked past, I saw one staff member holding up a cylinder that had popped open, the uncooked dough bulging out.
Then we got to the meat section and while I was putting ground beef into a baggie, she told me she was going to the fish counter to see if they had any live crabs.
No live crabs today, but they did have a WIDE selection of clams. Carla begged me to get her a clam, and I felt kind of terrible about it but I said no. I don’t like clams and I have no idea how to cook them, let alone a single clam.
Then she pointed out the oysters.
“Do you think they have pearls in them?” she asked.
I told her no, I didn’t think so, but it was possible. And she wanted me to ask the person staffing the fish counter if there were pearls inside. I told her that it was impossible for that person to know. The oysters were closed, and would remain so until they were cooked.
“No, mommy,” she said, knowingly. “They open and close like this in the water.” She showed me with her mouth. “It’s how they swim. Someone could look inside and see the pearl.”
Okay, fair. But this particular grocery store staff member was certainly not in the water with these oysters before they were caught.
“I think you should just ask, Mommy.”
I did not want to ask. So we stood there for a few more moments, discussing the probability of finding a pearl in a grocery store oyster.
I don’t know why it charmed me so much, but it did. How hopeful she was about the possibility of a pearl! How certain she was that the fish counter staffer would know whether pearls were present. How startlingly knowledgeable she was about bivalves. How willing she was to discuss it with me, and how carefully she constructed her arguments, trying to get me on board.
I don’t think I’m conveying it all well enough, but my heart was so full. It was such a happy shopping trip, such a fun time we spent together even though we were both doing a chore.
Sometimes I wish I were an oyster, so that I could wrap a morning like this one in gleaming nacre, protecting and preserving these fleeting moments of childhood like the precious pearls they are.
And now it’s time for lunch. Carla says she will close up the library and take her lunch break in the Book Nook Cafe, which she, the librarian, also owns and operates. It serves Lunchables.
