The kids are in the other room playing Wii, which allows me some time to write this neglected blog. I know that there are some of you out there, probably right this minute, who are updating your Facebook page with the words, “I am loving these last summer weeks with my sweet, well-behaved, beautiful children!” And you make me feel just a little bit guilty when I pay the 8th grader across the street to come play Sorry! with my boys for an hour while I sit in the driveway and reclaim my sanity.
I remember those images I had of what it would be like to have a child. It usually had to do with cute clothes and pretty nurseries and Christmas morning and warm cookies just out of the oven. The thing is – when I was paging through that imaginary scrapbook all those years ago, I forgot to turn to Chapter 7. If I had, I would have seen the title, “At the End of the Summer, There Will Be 14 Hours to Fill Each Day and Nothing To Do Except Let Your Kids Play on the Wii, and If You Do That You Will Prove To the World That You Are a BAD MOTHER.”
Sensing my unease, Blue just wandered into the kitchen and said, “Don’t worry, Mommy. Playing the Wii isn’t Screen Time, it’s exercise!!”
I totally believe those experts that warn us on a monthly basis that screen time will rot the brains of the next generation. And I’ve been lucky that my boys haven’t been the kinds of little kids that sit in front of the TV all day long. But I have also, on occasion (ahem), been willing to trade a few of their IQ points for a break from the endless crafts or just a bit of peace and quiet. And I have a sneaking suspicion that those screen time experts have never had the problem of needing their children to sit, in one place, without fighting or climbing or escaping, in order to grab a quick shower.
But these are just excuses, aren’t they? Yes, my kids have spent too much time playing video games this past week. And I will also confess to our habit of going to the library to play video games on the computers. Hey, don’t roll your eyes. I made them check out a book each time, too. And there was the walking back and forth to the car. That was good for them!
Here’s the real bummer of the situation. The excessive screen time in our family comes AFTER a full work day of wholesome and educational childhood entertainment. Take, for example, our schedule from one day this week:
6:33 a.m.: Wake up! Breakfast! Time to make a robot out of recyclables!
7:15 a.m.: Fight with brother because his robot is bigger than your robot. Screaming. Lose allowance.
7:30 a.m.: Make stuffed animals out of felt. Add inappropriate anatomical parts.
8:30 a.m.: Fight with brother. Screaming. Lose more allowance.
8:45 a.m.: Build Lego vehicle with strange weapons.
8:46 a.m.: Ask mother to help with Legos, even though mother doesn’t really understand Legos and gets frustrated with the diagrams.
8:47 a.m.: Ask mother to help with Legos.
8:48 a.m.: Can’t find a piece! Oh no! Screaming.
8:49 a.m.: Ask mother to help find piece ("Can you ask me nicely? I don’t respond to whining! Yes, you really are whining.").
8:50 a.m.-10:00 a.m.: Ask mother to help with Legos.
10:01 a.m.: Lego vehicle falls apart. Screaming.
10:02 a.m.: Time for more crafts! NO FAIR! He has better materials than I do!
10:03 a.m.: Fight with brother. Screaming. Lose more allowance.
10:04 a.m. -10:59 a.m.: Build life-sized tent out of paper. Your tent doesn’t stand up, but your brother’s does. More screaming.
11:00 a.m.: Eat lunch. Complain about selection. Beg for junk food.
11:45 a.m.: Go to pool. This is the far away pool, because the close-by pool is too boring.
12:15 – 1:30 p.m.: Swim happily. Mother rests, except to smile and nod every 30 seconds when you say, “Look at me! Did you see that?”
2:30 p.m.: Arrive home. Ask, “What are we going to do now?”
At this point, we have been busy with crafts and building and screaming and fighting and swimming for eight full hours. So we all engage in some review of first grade math:
Blue and Green are awake for 14 hours every day. They have been on the go for 8 hours already. How many more hours does the mother have to fill? If there are 3 more days in the week, how long before the mother goes crazy?
So I did what any BAD MOTHER would do, and I let the boys play their Wii. For just a little while. A few minutes, er….maybe an hour. Hours. Hell, I don’t know. Let’s just mention that we still had time for a science experiment before bedtime. And a game of cards (NO FAIR! He got better cards that I did! Screaming. Lose more allowance.).
8:31 p.m.: Kids asleep. Mother drinks.
Showing posts with label summer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label summer. Show all posts
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Friday, July 31, 2009
Unstuck
I have mentioned before how hard Blue and Green’s first years were. You know – the ENDLESS NONSTOP SCREAMING SCREAMING SCREAMING.
But perhaps I haven't told you as much about the tiny problem of the NO SLEEPING. And I have to say – all this time later, my body has still not quite recovered from all those YEARS of deprivation.
You are probably thinking to yourself, “Everybody has a tough time early on.” But let me tell you, this was different. I managed to get the two screaming babies that didn’t nap, that didn’t sleep at night. I was the mom at the playground swinging her kids at dawn. Michael was the dad going to the all night Starbucks drive-through. And our days were spent begging, pleading, bouncing, rocking, praying for 30 minutes of rest.
I remember going to the pediatrician's office, with a screaming butterball in each arm, and imploring the nurse to help us. I don’t know what I was thinking – this is the earthiest, no-antibiotic-prescribing doctor's office you could imagine -- but somehow I thought she’d pat me on the arm and give me a bottle of tranquilizers for the kids (or for me?). Instead, she smiled at me and said, “Have you tried the Baby Whisperer?”
I almost exploded. Of course we tried the whispering. We tried the crying-it-out and the crying-it-in. We tried having them sleep with us, in the car seat, on the couch. We tried songs and books and routines and the aforementioned begging. Nothing. No sleep.
And then, one evening, after TWO AND A HALF YEARS OF THIS, they fell asleep on the living room floor. And slept most of the night. And then the next day they took at nap at 9 and then another at 2. On the living room floor. So Michael and I lay down next to them and thanked our lucky stars for this gift.
Every night thereafter, those kids slept on the living room floor. And we didn’t mess with it, because HALLELUJAH they were sleeping. It didn’t matter that we no longer had access to the central space in the house. It didn’t matter that these were rather unorthodox arrangements. All that mattered was sleep.
Never fear, the kids now sleep in their own beds, usually all night long. But the consequences of that sleepless era are many. The most important consequence was the restriction that the lack-of-sleep placed on our sense of what was possible. And once they began to sleep like normal kids, we didn’t want to tinker with success. Naptime was sacred. Bedtime was inflexible. Frankly, we became inflexible.
I mention this now, because this has been the summer of big changes in our family. Maybe it’s the distance from those early years. Maybe it’s the boys’ increasing independence. But suddenly I have this drive to do all of the things we’ve been putting off in favor of rest.
First on my list was to take the boys camping. With such abundant natural beauty in our region, it’s a shame that we hadn’t taken them camping earlier. But, please – if there is ever the opportunity for a crappy night’s sleep, it’s while parked on the ground in a stuffy tent after a meal of burned marshmallows. This year, however, we had a new attitude: if they don’t get a good night’s sleep one night, they will make it up the next. Or perhaps more importantly, if WE don’t get a good night’s sleep one night, WE will make it up the next.
This is not to say that Michael and I did not go through our usual decision-making process before heading out to the wilderness. The conversation went something like this:
Michael: Do you think this is a good idea?
Me: It could be. But it could also ruin our lives.
Michael: What do you think is the worst thing that could happen?
Me: Well, it could rain, and the four of us would be jammed into the tent with nothing to do. And the boys would begin picking on each other, and we would start to scream at them and take away all of their allowance. And we WOULDN’T SLEEP AT ALL. Then we would go for weeks where everyone is crabby because they didn’t sleep on that one weekend. And then we would get swine flu, or bird flu, or bug flu, or whatever flu you get from not getting any sleep in the great outdoors.
Michael: Hmm. Anything besides that?
Since I couldn’t come up with any other dire predictions, we packed the car and headed out to experience our first camping adventure with the boys. We arrived, found our spot, unpacked our stuff, and held our breath. We fully anticipated Green to growl about not having access to his Wii. We fully anticipated Blue to turn to us with a bored expression and say, “What now?”
But you know what?
They loved it.
They loved the zippers on the tent. They loved the little paths that crisscrossed near our campsite. They loved the sticks and the stumps and the bugs and the bumps in the night. There was a small child somewhere in the campground that kept screaming, “I WANNA GO HOME! I WANNA GO HOME!” all night long. And the good news is….that child did not belong to us.
Tent:
Stump:
Spigot:
Gin:
The morning we were set to leave, we took a stroll along the beach at very low tide. It was the perfect family day – sun was shining, sand dollars and sea stars were littered everywhere, and we were all fairly rested. I was thinking to myself, “I think this trip has been a success. I can’t believe we accomplished this so easily.”
And then I fell into quicksand.
Yep. Quicksand.
I had never actually contemplated quicksand as a real phenomenon before. Isn’t it an Indiana Jones-ish idea? Something from cartoons? But no, there I was, sinking. It couldn’t be that I survived camping with my children just to die a slow, muddy death in Puget Sound. Could it?
Unfortunately, we were all a bit too alarmed by this event to think to snap a photo. But I looked something like this:
(photo from half-fast.org)
No, just kidding. Only my legs were submerged. But here’s the rub: if you are stuck in quicksand, and you manage to get one leg free, the only option you have is to put it back down in that very same quicksand as you attempt to free your other leg. And that sort of starts the process all over again.
Here’s the other bad thing that I discovered: if you get stuck in quicksand, no one can come over and help you, because they, too, will get stuck. So if, while you are sinking deeper and deeper into the abyss, your child comes running at you to show you the pieces of dead crab that he found (yuck), you have to scream bloody murder, “Don’t you dare come anywhere near me or you will be sucked into the center of the earth!” And you have to sound calm while you are screaming, so as not to worry him that YOU are being sucked into the center of the earth (even though you are).
It occurred to me that one of my biggest problems with the quicksand was that the muck had suctioned in my shoes. Perhaps, I figured, if I could free my feet from my shoes, I could extract myself from this dilemma. But then it dawned on me that I only had that one pair of shoes with me on the trip. As I wrestled with the problem of spending the rest of the day shoeless, Michael hollered at me to reach my arm down into the mud and free my feet. “Do it!” he shouted. “Stop thinking about it.”
“First of all, “ I said to him, “I never stop thinking. Some people even pay me to think. I am a thinker. Second, if I reach my arm into the mud, I’ll get all disgusting.”
He said, “You are already disgusting. You’ve been camping.”
That was a good point. It was also good that I am somewhat limber, because reaching arm-deep into quicksand while staying upright is quite a feat. But I did it, and I even managed to get the shoe out and toss it up the bank. Then I jogged on one leg a bit, trying to prevent further sinkage, while I freed the other foot.
Phew.
So what’s the moral of this story? Don’t get so blinded by your own success that you fail to notice the steaming pile of quicksand at your feet? Always pack an extra set of shoes, because you never know when yours will be swallowed up by nature? Do your yoga so that you can be prepared to balance on one muddy hand?
All of those things are true. But I got to thinking that maybe it’s simpler than that: whatever problem we have, we probably will not sink all the way down. We will get out eventually.
(Note to pediatrician: Even though we no longer have sleep problems, I’d still like a tranquilizer or two for those rough days. Like when Green calls Blue a buttburger, and Blue hits him in the face with a Wii remote. That kind of thing.)
But perhaps I haven't told you as much about the tiny problem of the NO SLEEPING. And I have to say – all this time later, my body has still not quite recovered from all those YEARS of deprivation.
You are probably thinking to yourself, “Everybody has a tough time early on.” But let me tell you, this was different. I managed to get the two screaming babies that didn’t nap, that didn’t sleep at night. I was the mom at the playground swinging her kids at dawn. Michael was the dad going to the all night Starbucks drive-through. And our days were spent begging, pleading, bouncing, rocking, praying for 30 minutes of rest.
I remember going to the pediatrician's office, with a screaming butterball in each arm, and imploring the nurse to help us. I don’t know what I was thinking – this is the earthiest, no-antibiotic-prescribing doctor's office you could imagine -- but somehow I thought she’d pat me on the arm and give me a bottle of tranquilizers for the kids (or for me?). Instead, she smiled at me and said, “Have you tried the Baby Whisperer?”
I almost exploded. Of course we tried the whispering. We tried the crying-it-out and the crying-it-in. We tried having them sleep with us, in the car seat, on the couch. We tried songs and books and routines and the aforementioned begging. Nothing. No sleep.
And then, one evening, after TWO AND A HALF YEARS OF THIS, they fell asleep on the living room floor. And slept most of the night. And then the next day they took at nap at 9 and then another at 2. On the living room floor. So Michael and I lay down next to them and thanked our lucky stars for this gift.
Every night thereafter, those kids slept on the living room floor. And we didn’t mess with it, because HALLELUJAH they were sleeping. It didn’t matter that we no longer had access to the central space in the house. It didn’t matter that these were rather unorthodox arrangements. All that mattered was sleep.
Never fear, the kids now sleep in their own beds, usually all night long. But the consequences of that sleepless era are many. The most important consequence was the restriction that the lack-of-sleep placed on our sense of what was possible. And once they began to sleep like normal kids, we didn’t want to tinker with success. Naptime was sacred. Bedtime was inflexible. Frankly, we became inflexible.
I mention this now, because this has been the summer of big changes in our family. Maybe it’s the distance from those early years. Maybe it’s the boys’ increasing independence. But suddenly I have this drive to do all of the things we’ve been putting off in favor of rest.
First on my list was to take the boys camping. With such abundant natural beauty in our region, it’s a shame that we hadn’t taken them camping earlier. But, please – if there is ever the opportunity for a crappy night’s sleep, it’s while parked on the ground in a stuffy tent after a meal of burned marshmallows. This year, however, we had a new attitude: if they don’t get a good night’s sleep one night, they will make it up the next. Or perhaps more importantly, if WE don’t get a good night’s sleep one night, WE will make it up the next.
This is not to say that Michael and I did not go through our usual decision-making process before heading out to the wilderness. The conversation went something like this:
Michael: Do you think this is a good idea?
Me: It could be. But it could also ruin our lives.
Michael: What do you think is the worst thing that could happen?
Me: Well, it could rain, and the four of us would be jammed into the tent with nothing to do. And the boys would begin picking on each other, and we would start to scream at them and take away all of their allowance. And we WOULDN’T SLEEP AT ALL. Then we would go for weeks where everyone is crabby because they didn’t sleep on that one weekend. And then we would get swine flu, or bird flu, or bug flu, or whatever flu you get from not getting any sleep in the great outdoors.
Michael: Hmm. Anything besides that?
Since I couldn’t come up with any other dire predictions, we packed the car and headed out to experience our first camping adventure with the boys. We arrived, found our spot, unpacked our stuff, and held our breath. We fully anticipated Green to growl about not having access to his Wii. We fully anticipated Blue to turn to us with a bored expression and say, “What now?”
But you know what?
They loved it.
They loved the zippers on the tent. They loved the little paths that crisscrossed near our campsite. They loved the sticks and the stumps and the bugs and the bumps in the night. There was a small child somewhere in the campground that kept screaming, “I WANNA GO HOME! I WANNA GO HOME!” all night long. And the good news is….that child did not belong to us.
Tent:
Stump:
Spigot:
Gin:
The morning we were set to leave, we took a stroll along the beach at very low tide. It was the perfect family day – sun was shining, sand dollars and sea stars were littered everywhere, and we were all fairly rested. I was thinking to myself, “I think this trip has been a success. I can’t believe we accomplished this so easily.”
And then I fell into quicksand.
Yep. Quicksand.
I had never actually contemplated quicksand as a real phenomenon before. Isn’t it an Indiana Jones-ish idea? Something from cartoons? But no, there I was, sinking. It couldn’t be that I survived camping with my children just to die a slow, muddy death in Puget Sound. Could it?
Unfortunately, we were all a bit too alarmed by this event to think to snap a photo. But I looked something like this:
(photo from half-fast.org)No, just kidding. Only my legs were submerged. But here’s the rub: if you are stuck in quicksand, and you manage to get one leg free, the only option you have is to put it back down in that very same quicksand as you attempt to free your other leg. And that sort of starts the process all over again.
Here’s the other bad thing that I discovered: if you get stuck in quicksand, no one can come over and help you, because they, too, will get stuck. So if, while you are sinking deeper and deeper into the abyss, your child comes running at you to show you the pieces of dead crab that he found (yuck), you have to scream bloody murder, “Don’t you dare come anywhere near me or you will be sucked into the center of the earth!” And you have to sound calm while you are screaming, so as not to worry him that YOU are being sucked into the center of the earth (even though you are).
It occurred to me that one of my biggest problems with the quicksand was that the muck had suctioned in my shoes. Perhaps, I figured, if I could free my feet from my shoes, I could extract myself from this dilemma. But then it dawned on me that I only had that one pair of shoes with me on the trip. As I wrestled with the problem of spending the rest of the day shoeless, Michael hollered at me to reach my arm down into the mud and free my feet. “Do it!” he shouted. “Stop thinking about it.”
“First of all, “ I said to him, “I never stop thinking. Some people even pay me to think. I am a thinker. Second, if I reach my arm into the mud, I’ll get all disgusting.”
He said, “You are already disgusting. You’ve been camping.”
That was a good point. It was also good that I am somewhat limber, because reaching arm-deep into quicksand while staying upright is quite a feat. But I did it, and I even managed to get the shoe out and toss it up the bank. Then I jogged on one leg a bit, trying to prevent further sinkage, while I freed the other foot.
Phew.
So what’s the moral of this story? Don’t get so blinded by your own success that you fail to notice the steaming pile of quicksand at your feet? Always pack an extra set of shoes, because you never know when yours will be swallowed up by nature? Do your yoga so that you can be prepared to balance on one muddy hand?
All of those things are true. But I got to thinking that maybe it’s simpler than that: whatever problem we have, we probably will not sink all the way down. We will get out eventually.
(Note to pediatrician: Even though we no longer have sleep problems, I’d still like a tranquilizer or two for those rough days. Like when Green calls Blue a buttburger, and Blue hits him in the face with a Wii remote. That kind of thing.)
Friday, September 5, 2008
Vacation Recap
Just in case you were wondering, I did bring the laptop with me on vacation. BUT I never turned it on, not even once. It sat unattended in my suitcase, making me just a bit (well, actually a lot) paranoid that some wicked sunbather was going to break into our hotel room and steal it.We had a nice time, despite a wee windstorm and the occasional six-year-old attitude problem. Notably, Green decided, after years of flagrant nudity, that he was suddenly and unrelentingly modest. "Uh, Green," I said. "Could you wait to take this developmentally-appropriate step until the whole family is not crammed into a single tiny space?" "NO!!!!" he bellowed. "I need my privacy!!" Not to be outdone, Blue also decided that I was never to set eyes on his cute little butt again. "But Blue," I argued, "just yesterday you were playing the naked somersault game!" (Come to think of it, I could do without any more naked somersaults). He looked at me as if to say, "That was then, this is now." The result of this new declaration was that the two of them spent a considerable amount of the vacation arguing about who was going to change his clothes in the postage stamp-sized bathroom.
The other thing that I learned on this trip is that it is unwise for me EVER to express my opinion or to make a suggestion. Apparently, adolescence has arrived early, because both kids are dead set on rejecting all of my good ideas. Here's an example:
(Vacation Morning Number One)
Me: Boys! Let's go to the beach!
Green: No, I want to go to the pool.
Blue: Me, too!
Me: But look -- the beach is sandy! You can dig!
Green: Digging is dumb.
Me: When did digging become dumb? Yesterday you made a point of bringing your buckets and shovels.
Blue: It wasn't dumb yesterday, but it's dumb today.
(Vacation Morning Number Two)
Me: Look, boys! There are waves at the beach! Let's go jump in them!
Green: No, I want to go to the pool.
Blue: Me, too.
Me: But there are no waves in the pool...
Green: Waves are dumb.
Blue: What a bad idea, Mommy.
(Vacation Morning Number Three. One hour before checkout).
Random Playmate: I'm going to the beach!
Green: Let's go to the beach!
Blue: Yes, the beach!
Green: This is so amazing! There's sand!
Blue: We can jump off the dock into the waves!
Me: Guys, you have five more minutes, and then we have to go pack up and leave.
Green: No fair! We didn't get to spend any time at the beach!
Blue: Why didn't you tell us there was sand at the beach! Why didn't you tell us about the waves?
Me: I did, but....
Green: I never get to do what I want!
Blue: I never want to go home!
(Wild, epic screaming ensues)
Next year, I'm going to try a different approach. This is what I envision:
Me: Boys, you may not go to the beach.
Green: Why? There's sand on the beach!
Blue: We could dig!
Me: Beaches are violent and dangerous and inappropriate.
Green: Mommy, you have to let us go to the beach!
Blue: Pleeease!
Me: OK. Just this once.
Green: You are the nicest Mommy ever.
Brilliant, don't you think?
Random Playmate: I'm going to the beach!
Green: Let's go to the beach!
Blue: Yes, the beach!
Green: This is so amazing! There's sand!
Blue: We can jump off the dock into the waves!
Me: Guys, you have five more minutes, and then we have to go pack up and leave.
Green: No fair! We didn't get to spend any time at the beach!
Blue: Why didn't you tell us there was sand at the beach! Why didn't you tell us about the waves?
Me: I did, but....
Green: I never get to do what I want!
Blue: I never want to go home!
(Wild, epic screaming ensues)
Next year, I'm going to try a different approach. This is what I envision:
Me: Boys, you may not go to the beach.
Green: Why? There's sand on the beach!
Blue: We could dig!
Me: Beaches are violent and dangerous and inappropriate.
Green: Mommy, you have to let us go to the beach!
Blue: Pleeease!
Me: OK. Just this once.
Green: You are the nicest Mommy ever.
Brilliant, don't you think?
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Vacation, All I Ever Wanted, Vacation, Have To Get Away
I know it's been awhile since I last updated. I can't blame my absence on the lazy days of summer, because nothing around here has been lazy since camp ended. I don't think I can emphasize enough how much I am ready for SCHOOL TO START!!!! Our house is filled to the brim with arguments over IT'S NOT FAIR and HE WON'T LET ME HAVE A TURN and YOU'RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME.
So we're getting out of Dodge. We're going to a place that's three hours away and supposedly has some hot weather and a pool. If I'm honest, there's something nostalgic driving this trip for me. When I was a kid, my parents and I went up to a place in northern Michigan every summer. We stayed in a cabin that was on a small lake, and we just hung out. There was a beach and paddle boards and a game room and other kids. There was also a ghost that inhabited one of the buildings, and she prompted several intense searches that would rival anything you could see on the A&E channel's Children of the Paranormal (and this show is HILARIOUS. You should check it out).
(And I know my parents are reading this right now, saying, "That didn't happen. There wasn't any ghost hunting." But you have to trust me -- they were too busy leisurely reading books to notice any hauntings).
Anyway, I want that kind of vacation for Blue and Green. You know, the stuff of good memories. The only difference is that my kids are not really inclined to run off and dig holes and find companions and search for ghosts. They're more likely to turn their freckly faces up at us and say, "What now?" as if we hold The Itinerary of Fun in our back pockets. This has made it so that I have to plan for every contingency. What if they suddenly become really independent and go hunt for ghosts? I'm bringing 3 books and a silly magazine just in case I magically have the time to read. What if it pours down rain for three days? Ack! I'm bringing a sack full of Legos and some craft projects and a big bottle of whiskey. What if it's too cold to swim but not raining? Tennis rackets! Balls! Board games! It occurs to me as I write this that maybe the reason that our kids can't just amuse themselves is that their imaginations are buried somewhere under the luggage.
The most pressing question that plagues us as we get ready to go on vacation is whether or not to bring the laptop. Isn't this the biggest thing that distinguishes the Brady Bunch vacations of the seventies from the trips we take with our own kids? Michael is worried that he might slip in his fantasy baseball rankings if he can't stay connected (and while he's checking the stats, he could also make sure everything's going OK at the office...). And then there's our habit of watching The Closer DVDs in the evenings. What will we do if we have to wait until the weekend to find out what color lipstick Kyra Sedgwick wears in the next episode? I'm all about rustic family time, but that might put us over the edge.
I do think that the computer will tether us to our daily lives in a way that will diminish the getting-away quality of this trip. The question is, do we have the fortitude to leave it behind? Stay tuned.
So we're getting out of Dodge. We're going to a place that's three hours away and supposedly has some hot weather and a pool. If I'm honest, there's something nostalgic driving this trip for me. When I was a kid, my parents and I went up to a place in northern Michigan every summer. We stayed in a cabin that was on a small lake, and we just hung out. There was a beach and paddle boards and a game room and other kids. There was also a ghost that inhabited one of the buildings, and she prompted several intense searches that would rival anything you could see on the A&E channel's Children of the Paranormal (and this show is HILARIOUS. You should check it out).
(And I know my parents are reading this right now, saying, "That didn't happen. There wasn't any ghost hunting." But you have to trust me -- they were too busy leisurely reading books to notice any hauntings).
Anyway, I want that kind of vacation for Blue and Green. You know, the stuff of good memories. The only difference is that my kids are not really inclined to run off and dig holes and find companions and search for ghosts. They're more likely to turn their freckly faces up at us and say, "What now?" as if we hold The Itinerary of Fun in our back pockets. This has made it so that I have to plan for every contingency. What if they suddenly become really independent and go hunt for ghosts? I'm bringing 3 books and a silly magazine just in case I magically have the time to read. What if it pours down rain for three days? Ack! I'm bringing a sack full of Legos and some craft projects and a big bottle of whiskey. What if it's too cold to swim but not raining? Tennis rackets! Balls! Board games! It occurs to me as I write this that maybe the reason that our kids can't just amuse themselves is that their imaginations are buried somewhere under the luggage.
The most pressing question that plagues us as we get ready to go on vacation is whether or not to bring the laptop. Isn't this the biggest thing that distinguishes the Brady Bunch vacations of the seventies from the trips we take with our own kids? Michael is worried that he might slip in his fantasy baseball rankings if he can't stay connected (and while he's checking the stats, he could also make sure everything's going OK at the office...). And then there's our habit of watching The Closer DVDs in the evenings. What will we do if we have to wait until the weekend to find out what color lipstick Kyra Sedgwick wears in the next episode? I'm all about rustic family time, but that might put us over the edge.
I do think that the computer will tether us to our daily lives in a way that will diminish the getting-away quality of this trip. The question is, do we have the fortitude to leave it behind? Stay tuned.
Monday, September 3, 2007
Summer's Last Gasp
To celebrate the end of summer, Blue and Green created a lemonade stand. This was no small project. First of all, we had to overcome their lofty expectations about what was involved in such an enterprise. For example, we were not going to build a series of traps to catch any bad guys that stopped for refreshments. And we were not going to offer a series of nine drink choices. We were not going to give away prizes to our customers, and we were not going to charge $6,000 per glass.
It was going to be a lemonade stand. The old-fashioned kind. With just lemonade. For a quarter.
But, still, this was their project, and they demanded some control.
They put on their lemonade stand outfits and brought their cash registers:
It was going to be a lemonade stand. The old-fashioned kind. With just lemonade. For a quarter.
But, still, this was their project, and they demanded some control.
They created some lemonade stand head gear:
And created some work for the lemonade stand art gallery:
They put on their lemonade stand outfits and brought their cash registers:
And they made $19 dollars for their efforts. Green says he plans on buying "some expensive toys" with the profits.
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