Word To The Ys

Sometimes I start a post and realize it’s really boring.  I’m ditching the first effort, which focused too much on my crazy day, and instead will talk about my more-entertaining children.  To wit:

Maxwell

Last night after he’d gone to his bed, I heard Max sobbing into his pillow.  I raced up to see what was wrong.  “Buddy…what is it?”  I asked.  He replied, “I just feel like time is going so fast!”

I laid down in bed with him, stroking his hair.  “Time is going so fast, I feel like I’m gonna wake up tomorrow and it’ll be Seth’s graduation!” he choked out.  Aw, buddy!  I feel you.  He’s such a sensitive little fella.  We lay in his bed, whispering (me) and loudly lamenting (him) about the passage of time.  After 10 minutes, we finally got to the core of it: “I can’t believe I’m going to be in second grade!  It feels like with each new grade and year that passes, I’m losing my childhood!”  Ah.  This sparked a good conversation about living our best each day, no matter what.  Doing fun and interesting things and always learning something new; committing things to memory so we can continue to enjoy them in the future.  It’s always amazing to have these discussions with him because he just gets it, even though he is still so young.  Such an old little soul.  I know how hard it can be, because he’s basically me…just in boy form.  I told him about 2nd grade being my favorite year in elementary school; about how that was the year I became a writer and learned to sing and spelled almost every word right but learned about making mistakes.  I try my hardest to talk him through these emotional growing pains, just as I patiently rub his feet and legs in the middle of the night to alleviate his physical growing pains, sleepy though I may be, because I remember how much it hurts.  I hope I helped to ease some of his anxieties.  I think it worked because he fell asleep shortly thereafter.

Oliver

Ollie has been changing so much lately.  Not as much as we’d thought, as many things that had calmed down were due to his protracted illness and not a developmental shift, after all.  Joke’s on us!  But he is still growing up in ways I never thought would come.  He recognizes after he has an inappropriate action or outburst what he’s responsible for (fairly quickly, too) and apologizes of his own volition.  I’m pretty sure there are 30-somethings who still can’t do that!  He stays near us when we ask him to instead of running off.  He’s picked up a sense of caution, which has decelerated my gray-hair growth significantly.  He will soon start pre-K at Maxwell’s school, which he also still calls “Max’s School”.  It will be hard to say goodbye to the preschool that has literally taught him how to exist in a group. 

Speaking of preschool…today, when I picked Ollie up from school, I saw that he was wearing this:

and enjoyed the story of its origins as told by his teacher: “I was making the nametags for each of the kids, and drawing a little picture of something they wanted on it.  Lots of robots and butterflies and simple things.  Then I got to Ollie and he said, ‘A Goat!’  I wondered if I’d be able to draw a goat, but picked up the gray marker to at least give it a shot until he interrupted with, ‘NO! A pink goat.’”

Have I mentioned how much I love this child?  I mean, a pink goat?  Where does he come up with this stuff?!?

Seth

My baby.  Sigh.  He’s been…interesting lately.  His temper has reached an all-time high, while his general nature remains sunny and fun.  People never believe us about the temper thing, until they see it explode (from nowhere, really) and witness his head spin 360 degrees while his mouth emits the hellcat scream.  Wowza.

But let’s focus on what we enjoy of him lately.  He is speaking in sentences, even if I’m the only one who really understands most of what he says (well, me and the Baby Whisperer, Ollie.)  Tonight we went out for dinner (see: first paragraph referencing a crazy day, and contrary to my norm I’m not being hyperbolic.)  Let’s just say it was a place where we could eat pancakes and bacon. FOR DINNER.  That’s magic, right there.  We were waiting for our order and Seth saw someone else with theirs.  “I WAN DA BAKEH!” he exclaims.  I’ll translate: “I want that bacon!”  We assured him his was on the way.  He ate it first, like any respectable member of this family would. Also amusing: he tries to tell knock-knock jokes.  It usually goes like this: (Seth) “Na-Na!” (Me) “Who’s there?” (Seth) belfjshwlfugjsklajdufgh! (Me) “belfjshwlfugjsklajdufgh who?”  (Seth) *grinning and laughter*

Well, folks…that’s all I’ve got for tonight.  But tomorrow (Friday) morning, our very own Crazy Aunt Linda will be on-air in WI extolling her love for Adam Lambert!  Listen to her here at 9:00 AM if you want to enjoy her hilariousness:

http://player.cumulusstreaming.com/SLPLayer.aspx?WZOK-FM

Coming Soon…tales from the MN State Fair 1993!  With audio!  Tales of our new school year!  More movies!  Less whining!

Posted in Max, Ollie, Seth | 2 Comments »

Hello, readers.  Guess what?  Maxwell has officially completed 1st grade.  Which is mind-boggling and daunting all at once. 

The daunting bit is because now he’s home for a month, and I have to keep this smarty pants from getting insanely bored.  On day one of summer vacation, we went to the dentist for sealants (gee, aren’t I a poster girl of a mother?), shopped at Target (hey, at least they got popcorn), and went to the library (when all else fails, send him to a couch with a book!)  This afternoon we’re going to make a daily schedule for the rest of the vacation…just for the afternoon hours.  The hours when Oliver is home from his school and Seth is napping.  Because those are the hours that are ripe for disaster.  Maxwell talks loudly; Oliver screeches; they wrestle and yell and become injured; Seth wakes up screaming.  This is what happens in an unstructured afternoon.

Totally unrelated, I’ve had something on my mind a lot lately…and the shopping trip today didn’t help any.  I’ve been thinking about wastefulness.  We had a garbage disposal salesman out in our neighborhood last night and he kept talking about the great price he could get us on the largest barrel.  Now in all fairness, we currently have the largest barrel because it’s the best value.  But we very rarely fill it.  In fact, I would say it is commonly only half-full on our weekly pick-up day.  So I’ve often thought of downsizing but the savings are really insignificant, so there isn’t much incentive.  But how weird is it, that this culture of ours encourages consume-and-dispose mindsets by offering such great prices on huge garbage bins?

As previously stated, we went to Target this morning.  While the boys munched on popcorn I got them shampoo and soap, and new toothbrushes.  Wouldn’t you know it, but the nifty recycled plastic toothbrushes we’ve enjoyed for a year or two are no longer available.  They were attractive to me because they fit in our 1950′s toothbrush holder slots, came in wonderful colors, were made of recycled yogurt containers, and could be sent back to the manufacturer to be recycled again when we were done with them.  But obviously mass-market consumerism and multi-party recycling do not go hand-in-hand.  I guess I will have to look for them elsewhere. 

When I got home and got everyone settled, I hopped onto Facebook and saw a friend had posted questions with regard to back-to-school: how much do you spend on your kids?  Do they get a new backpack each year?  I initially sort of giggled at the question, because we spend maybe $100, including expensive wide-width shoes, for the boys for school.  Part of this is because we thankfully go to a uniform school, and because we use the shirts and pants for 2 years.  5 polos, 5 pairs of pants, some shoes to slowly disintegrate over the course of a year (those are an annual necessity, obviously.)  I was surprised, though, to read the responses.  Many people spend many hundreds of dollars on clothes each year.  Everything is new.  Their kids get a new backpack each year, because they either get destroyed over the school year or they need to be in keeping with the latest trends.  Wow…I can’t believe how monumentally uncool our kids will be if that’s the path to awesomeness.  Maxwell has had the same Lands End backpack for 3 years.  Obviously it is a high-quality backpack to have withstood daily use for 3 years.  He asked me today at Target, as we passed the “Back 2 School!” section (don’t even get me started!) if he could have a new backpack.  And my answer was: no.  The one you have is still in great condition, and will continue to serve you well for several more years.

And then I came home and saw that thread.  Besides the mind-boggling cost factor, I have so much trouble with the idea of disposing of “old” things in favor of “new” ones all the time.  I literally get ill sometimes thinking about my waste being taken to the dump, deposited there to sit and sit far beyond my life span.  I don’t mean this to be a lecturing thing at all, but I’m trying to describe my actual physical reaction to waste.  Today I had to throw out silicone spatulas way past their prime (a directive from the big Y, who is seriously squicked out by silicone to begin with, but especially when it starts chipping away) and the sight of them on top of my trash bag made me nauseous.  So just imagining all these backpacks, discarded because they weren’t awesome enough anymore or because they were in disrepair…ugh.  I know it’s such a small thing but gosh.

Joe and I have often talked about the disposable culture and how it has shaped us.   I’m thrifty (see: my refusal to buy new backpacks for my children) but I gladly spend more for products of good quality that will last.  In recent years it has occurred to me that often I can fix things if they break down instead of running out for a replacement.  I can sew things back together.  I can take an electronic device apart and troubleshoot.  I can bring in the heavy guns (Joe) when I can’t figure it out myself.  But we also work against a manufacturing sector that is pressured to make things inexpensive, and therefore the products are cheap.  They are not able to be fixed because they have completely broken down.  Replacement parts are not available to make repairs as a consumer.  Recycling is made inconvenient and sometimes costly (as in the case of electronics).   Just to clarify: we are not hoarders by any means.  If something has gone all the way ’round the bend, it leaves our house in the appropriate manner; we keep only what is currently useful.  But when you have something you use and it breaks, shouldn’t you be able to do something with it besides tossing it in your economy-sized trash bin?

Joe and I both used to make fun of our parents for holding on to things forever, well past their prime.  As children of parents raised during the Depression, it was ingrained in them to waste not, want not.  And I just want to say that I’m sorry for laughing about that.  Because the older I get, the more I see that throwing out the old in favor of the shiny new thing is naive.

Posted in Max, Ollie, Over My Head | 8 Comments »