Summer Hot Chocolate

We went to brunch twice while on vacation last week.   In the list of drink possibilities there was hot chocolate and my son and daughter decided that’s what they’d have.   Without whipped cream they both  said.

A few minutes later the hot chocolate comes to the table with a cup of ice smartly brought by the waitress because she predicted complaints on temperature.   After reducing the hot chocolate to barely lukewarm chocolate both children seemed to be happy with their beverage selections.

A few days later at the brunch with Chase from the show Paw Patrol, my daughter ordered hot chocolate again.   This time there were little marshmallows in their mugs that melted almost as fast as we put ice cubes in it to cool down the drinks.  

My son looked at me and then at his drink and said, “hot chocolate in the summer is really weird.”

The Big Boy Update:  After dinner tonight while my husband and I were cleaning up I overheard my son say in a hushed tone to his sister while looking our way, “um, don’t tell the older people…”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter wanted to collect shells when we went to the ocean and the inlet  while on vacation.   What she liked doing more than collecting the shells though was cleaning and sorting them on the deck at the house though.   She would ask for a cup and a bowl and she’d move the shells around, cleaning them, then sorting them and then (after putting them back in a single pile) dividing them up again.    While I was out on the deck during one of her shell cleaning times she looked up and said, “do you know why I collect shells?  It’s just one of my hobbies.   I like collecting shells.   It’s one of my only hobbies while I’m here.   It’s my favorite hobby.”   And then, ultimately after all the work she’d done, she decided she didn’t want to take any of her shells home, she wanted them to stay at the beach.

Bad Mom

I did something in the car the other day that would have shocked a lot of people.   We were on the way to brunch with my husband and nephew.   I was in the middle row and my two children were in the third row and in typical sibling fashion, an argument started.

This happens and it doesn’t always last for long and mostly it doesn’t result in violence, only in this case my two were hungry and trapped in a car together right beside each other, causing this argument to escalate.   I tried the reverse-psychology option on them first, telling them to please go right ahead and hurt each other and could they let us know if we needed to go ahead and drive to the hospital now?

Sometimes that works, sometimes telling them I’ll pull over and put them out of the car on the side of the road until they come to peaceful terms will cause the argument to diffuse, but something unfortunate happened next: my son accidentally broke his sister’s bracelet she’d just gotten from Grandma Shu.  Beads went flying and my daughter started screaming.

We were about two blocks from the restaurant and I don’t remember if I got out of my seat and climbed back to the third row before we were stopped or not, but I did.   And I lost it on my children.   I am not ashamed to tell you that I hit my son in the head with the palm of my hand.   Not hard, but enough to startle him, because what he was doing was hitting her.   My nephew said he saw my son elbow my daughter in the face.

Now for those of you who’ve been following this blog for a while, you know my daughter is in danger of damage to her eyes with mild head trauma.   Her retinas can re-detatch (is that a word), she can have bleeds in her eyes and pressure can drop.   And all that means more vision loss and she has so very little now, we just can’t risk it.

So I had to scare my son (and daughter) to, and I’ll quote myself, “NEVER EVER, EVER HIT ANYONE IN THE HEAD!”  I explained that they could hurt each other’s eyes.   I didn’t bother to explain that my son would probably be fine even with the most gruesome of punches launched at him by his sister.   I had to make it even because I didn’t want to make it look like my son had to treat his sister special or that my daughter was special in a negative way.

And I screamed it.   The whole time.   I bellowed at them.  I was for all they could tell, furious.   Because I wanted them to be scared.   I wanted them to remember and not hit each other’s faces if it was going to come to blows between them.  Then I asked if the understood and if they did, tell me what they should never, ever do and they could get out of the car and go to breakfast and see Chase from Paw Patrol (my daughter’s favorite).

My son immediately (and surprisingly to me because he’s stubborn) told me not to hit people in the head.  Out the door he went and I was left with my daughter who wailed and cried and moaned and just could not manage to say it even though she desperately wanted to go meet Chase.    After ten minutes she calmed down enough and we made it in time to lunch.

I felt sort of bad for the intense and out of control display I had done in the car.   I leaned over to Kyle, my nephew and told him I apologized for the crazy but I had to shock the children because I would far rather be though of as a bad mom than a mom who, through inaction, didn’t prevent her daughter from becoming more blind.

The Big Boy Update:  While we were in the car on the drive home something happened and my husband swerved the car suddenly.   I cried out some explicative which you’ll be able to guess when I tell you what my son said next.   He admonished me from the back seat saying, “don’t say that F word again in our faces, mom!”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter starts school on Tuesday at a new school.   We’ve been trying to make her feel comfortable about the transition, being positive about her upcoming new experience.   I was folding laundry when I heard my husband ask the question, “what’s the most important thing to remember about your new school?”  My daughter thought and then said, “the bathroom?”

I Didn’t Break My Face

I sent my best friend a text this morning telling her I broke my face last night.   She did not react well.   That’s when I realized I might have been exaggerating a bit on the whole “breaking” part.   I did inflict a nice little wound though.

I was heading downstairs to the basement to get a beer and I tripped.   I think I tripped on the edge of the carpet from the hallway.   There was a foosball table directly ahead of me and as I was stumbling I pulled my hands up to protect my face—only I had a glass in my left hand.   The class hit me right between the eyebrows.  

My husband heard me fall and came downstairs to find me holding a paper towel to my forehead with blood dripping down my face.  The adults who were still awake talked about what to do.   It was about an inch cut in an arc that matched (to no one’s surprise) the shape of the glass I had been holding.

So urgent care (it was after eleven o’clock), emergency room?   Or butterfly closures?   At this point I’ve had to do this with my children a number of times.   Keeping the tissues connected to facilitate primary healing is very important.   Stitches will do that for a wound that won’t stay closed.   This was easily closed very accurately because the cut was so clean.    So we went for butterfly closures.    No one had to wait for hours at the emergency room to find out they would do the same thing.   Stitches?  I don’t mind them, but I think my husband did a bang up job fixing my banged up face.

So today I have two large, white, butterfly closures with some dried blood stains between my eyebrows.   We’re traveling home and stopping to charge the car, go to the bathroom, get food for the children, oh, and clean up the vomit from my son getting carsick.    I don’t really mind how I look because I know it’s important to help the wound heal with as minimal a scar as possible.

Some people bring home a t-shirt as a memento from their summer vacation;  I might be bringing home a scar this year.

The Big Boy Update:  My son was eating some breakfast this morning and I asked him if I could try it and have a bite.   He didn’t want to share so I said, “please?”   After telling me no again he told me in a confident tone, “you can just eat it in your mind, mom”.  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  On the drive home today my husband jerked the wheel to pull us away from a car that was drifting into our lane.   I cried out and the car beeped it’s proximity alarm.  My daughter asked from the back seat, “what’s all that racket, Dad?”

This Little Girl That

Sometimes I run over with cute blog things about one child or another.   Sometimes it’s about both children.   While we’ve been on vacation my daughter has been doing her darnedest to be social with every member of our family, including those that are somewhat reticent to be engaged.   She’s been successful on almost all fronts and my family, knowing about this blog, have come to me with all sorts of things she’s said and done.   So tonight is mostly about her.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:
The Pirate Ship:  At the boardwalk the ride she like the most (I think, gauging from the amount of smiles) was the Pirate Ship.   The first time she rode it my husband helped her and her brother board it and took them to the last row, knowing those extremity rows would have the most movement.   She smiled and smiled and you could tell she loved every bit of the motion.   After that and a few other rides we got ice cream and lemonade and then she asked me if she could go again—stipulating she wanted to do it herself.   I said sure and guided her to the steps, which had a turn in them.   The ticket taker realized something was up when she didn’t know where to hand the tickets off but he let her find her own way, this time not in the last row, and for all I could tell she got just as much joy from the ride the second time around.   He helped her off and guided her to the exit area and I told him loudly from far below, “she wanted to do it herself.”  He nodded and we both smiled.

Only Girl Singers:   My niece, Nicole, was trying to introduce my daughter to some music she liked.   My daughter was apparently balking at a lot of her choices and finally explained, “I only like songs where girls are singing.”  Nicole and I talked about it and we do listen to sings with male singers, but apparently those aren’t the ones my daughter likes the most.

Grass Angels:   We went to the playground close to the house today.   On the way back my son and daughter were doing the bit where they run to the next intersection and then stop before the street crossing.   I couldn’t tell what was happening as I walked towards them because my daughter was on the ground.   Then, as I drew close I realized, my daughter was making “grass angels” like snow angels, only much less noticeable but not any less fun.   As we got closer to home she did this at every intersection.   She loved it.  

You Can’t Have a Brownie:  My daughter and Nicole made brownies before dinner tonight.   There was some disappointment across the children, young and old, because the brownies were for after dinner, even though that would make them less-warm at the time.   My daughter told her cousin very authoritatively, “If you don’t eat dinner, then you can’t have a frownie”.

Blackberry Picking:  Uncle Eric has a blackberry bush.   This bush is small and in the corner of the yard, two flights of stairs down from the main living floor of their house.   My daughter told me this evening, “I need to go outside, I’ll be right back.”  The mom who has a blind child in me said, “be careful”.   She headed off with a confident, “I will”.    She reappeared about ten minutes later with a black, ripe blackberry.    From a bush with very few ripe berries.    Picked by a child who can barely tell colors at all now.

The Big Boy Update:  My son has been watching a decent bit on YouTube.   The content is all child-appropriate, and it’s motivated him to create Lego things and be more creative or more motivated.    Today he told me while we were at the playground, “Mom, I want to be on YouTube.”   I told him I had a YouTube channel, what did he want to do on his videos?   He had grandiose plans, none of which would be easily executed.   I told him I would be glad to help him so to think it through and we’d get a plan and post something and share it with our families.  

The Four-way Tunnel

We’ve been doing all sorts of things on our vacation with family.  Most notably, consuming calories.   Or at least that’s what it feels like I’ve been doing.   There were donuts (three days now) and cinnamon buns.   We had lasagna that was so good I overate to the point of discomfort with a side-effect of looking pregnant to my son.   There were crab legs, lobster, shrimp and fish.   And don’t forget the pancakes.

We also had ice cream and Kona Ice and junk food snacking.   Oh, and beer.   My brother-in-law makes beer and has on tap four of his beers to select from at their tiki bar in the basement.  This year featured a new entry in the beer category, KaiPA.   It’s like an IPA only it was the first batch of beer their son, Kyle, made and KaiPA it was named when the batch turned out to be quite good.

We’ve been on jet skis, taken boat rides, swam in the lagoon, and walked to the beach.   We’ve shopped at the local beach store for beach necessities like sandals and t-shirts for gifts.   And we’ve sat around the house and done a lot of nothing—one of my favorite vacation pastimes.

Today we took the boat and some jet skis to the inlet where the sound meets the ocean.   We anchored the boat and ran the jet skis aground and let the children do that thing they do where the get their entire bodies covered in sand and experience no discomfort at all whatsoever, furthering my theory that children’s nervous systems aren’t fully developed yet.

After eating our lunch of hoagies and chips some of us sat on the boat and talked.  Others got out and walked on the beach.   As I looked over a few minutes later I saw my two children, their cousin Kyle (ala KaiPA) and his girlfriend Madison doing something in the sand.   Kyle and Madison were working deliberately while my children dug furiously.    I yelled out, asking what was up?

My husband said, “they’re building a tunnel.”   But this was no single path tunnel.   They were at ninety degrees from each other and were trying to make a four-way tunnel meet in the middle.     Digging went on for a bit and then suddenly I heard cries out from the beach.    They’d made it.   They had completed a sand intersection underground.    And they were happy about it.

I don’t know how long the sand tunnels lasted, possibly not long because another thing children excel at  is trouncing on or destroying something once it’s completed.   No one seemed upset though as we called out to get back on the boat, we were heading home.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is apparently much like his cousin, Kyle in many ways.   As we headed back to the house after our afternoon at the inlet my son pulled a towel over his body, curled up and fell asleep.   Kyle did this when he was a child too.   My son was still asleep a half-hour after we got back, not waking even as the engines were revved up and cleaned out once docked (not a quiet process).

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter had run into something for the second bad time yesterday.   My husband had her in his lap making sure she was okay when she said to him, “today is a bad day”.   Meaning she was hurting herself more than usual.    I think today has been a good day though.

The Hairbrush Battle

My daughter hates to have her hair brushed.   It’s like a battle where she wants to run away but knows she’ll get in more trouble if she does.   He hair is sort of like one of those rats nest-type consistency.   It was long without bangs and that required management so it would stay out of her face.   Sometimes—rarely—she’d sit still long enough for me to french braid it but mostly we’d put elastic bands in it and hope the majority would stay out of her food and the painting work she loved to do at school.

Then I gave up on long hair.  I had wanted her to have long hair since she was born with almost pure white hair but it was slow-growing, fine and breakable and it seemed a losing cause for most of her first five years.   We had gotten bangs cut once before but it was at the beginning of her vision loss when she was put on multiple types of systemic steroids and she ballooned up in weight, looking nothing like out thin little girl.   Maybe it was because of that that I shied away from bangs, even though it would clearly keep the hair out of her face.

But I got fed up with the hair brushing battle and we cut her hair short with bangs.   And she looked cute and we found out her hair was a lot thicker than we’d realized when we cut the weight off.   Now her hair is long enough to put in a pony tail or a “bunny bun” as she calls it, but it also stays out of her food and face and goes easily behind her ears when she wants to push it back.

But that hair brushing battle still remained.   You’d think I was a horrible parent, making her suffer through the simple act of getting her hair in a marginally less-messy state before school each day.   And then I had an idea: I’d let her brush her own hair.   The simple suggestion of her brushing her own hair (she loves being capable) has changed everything.    What’s interesting is how she brushes her hair; she isn’t gentle, she isn’t slow with the tangles, she aggressively brushes through all her hair in the morning quickly so she can get to the next thing on her little girl list of things to do.  

Sometimes the solution to a problem is just to go about the situation in a different way with children.

The Big Boy Update:  My children went to the boardwalk again today, this time with my in-laws.   There was a special for the day for a wrist band giving unlimited rides and this suited my son just fine.   I think his favorite one was what was called the Gravitron when I was growing up but was relabeled to look like an alien spaceship.   My son loved going into it and experiencing, “zero gravity” as he floated up to the top of the ride.   He was tall enough to go into the dark machine all by himself.   He wasn’t scared at all and he didn’t get nauseated from the spinning motion.   He loved it.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter loves the rides at the boardwalk too.   She was telling people about it when they got home and I heard her say, “I was very angry, it didn’t go as fast as I liked.”  When we asked her what ride it was (I still don’t know the actual name) she told us it was, “the whipping car”.

Welcome to S.I.C.

We went out to brunch this morning.   My sister-in-law picked up my niece from an overnight she had had with some friends and we met them at a restaurant in the boardwalk area of the small town, Sea Isle City, they live in on the New Jersey shore.

We didn’t realize there was a farmer’s market happening which meant there wasn’t a lot of parking.   As we drove around one of the blocks my brother-in-law said, “there’s a spot if we can turn around and get it in time.”  And we did and got lucky and got the spot.   My husband was able to do a fun demo where our Tesla Model X parallel parks itself.   Perfectly parks itself.   I’m not good at parallel parking because I’ve had very little experience given the street dynamics of the city we live in but I can say I was officially jealous of the skills with which our car effortlessly parked itself.

We went into the restaurant and sat across two tables because there wasn’t one that would fit us all.   We had chocolate milk with whipped cream, waffles, bacon, eggs and other breakfast foods which were devoured by all.   Then we headed back to our cars with plans to go out on the jet skis for a trip through the trails.

As we approached our car there was a piece of paper stuck to the windshield that read:

What a way to make our day.   What a great message.   The anonymous author welcomed us to Sea Isle City (S.I.C) and the comment about flying referred to our license plate ITCANFLY (because the car has wings with the falcon wing doors and is darned fast).    The postscript it sounds like the note writer has a Tesla on order, maybe one of the Model IIIs that just started rolling out this month.

I love our cars.   Every single day.

The Big Boy Update:  Children can push your buttons.   I think it’s an innate skill they’re born with.   I try to remain calm and not lose my temper but I regularly fail.   Yesterday after snapping at my son he announced loudly, “Mom, you’re the queen of mean.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   My daughter loves animals.  She also loves to help.   This morning she was in our bedroom when we heard a lapping sound and realized Taylor, their dog, was drinking water out of the toilet.   We moved Taylor along and didn’t think more of it.   But my daughter had other ideas.   She left and then came back to our room a few minutes later saying, “I checked and Taylor’s water bowl is empty.   I was going to fill it up, but I wanted to make sure it was okay first so I came to ask you.”   I didn’t know she even knew where Taylor’s water bowl was.