Dinner With Six

My husband and best friend’s husband have been out of town skiing this week.   They’ve had a good time I think with only one torn ACL (one of the other people on the trip, who thankfully is doing well).    They’re on the way home tonight with only three delays to their trip, but at this point it looks like they will make it tonight.

My best friend and I decided to spend the afternoon together.  She has four children and I have two which means we hovered somewhere between chaos and calamity for most of the afternoon.   After a point I started handing out iPads so she and I could have a chance to talk.

When we realized it was about dinner time we decided neither of us wanted to deal with a meal at home so into two cars we piled, driving off in the rain to eat pizza and have no dishes to clean up afterwards.   There were complaints (who complains about pizza?) but we held firm.   I lost my temper once in the car because I was full up on whining for the day.   And after a false start to a restaurant that was overly busy and clearly wasn’t interested in boisterous children in their refined establishment, we made it to our local pizza-by-the-slice restaurant and all settled down to an enjoyable meal.

Did you catch the sarcasm in that last sentence?   There was absolutely, positively no “settling down” on the part of the children.   The two adults weren’t settled downed because we were dealing with the running about, loud, ebullient (or petulant) children.    And enjoyable?  I’m not sure I’d call it as such.   It was manageable, perhaps.

The napkin dispensers were the kind where you have to pull out one napkin before you can get a second napkin.   I think we made seven or eight trips to get napkins because there is a lot of grease with pizza and garlic knots and there was a complete lack of napkin conservation from the children.   But we managed.

I’m making it sound bad, but it wasn’t.   I love my best friend’s children.   They are sweet and fun and they like to tell me things and I do my best to listen, even when I have my two children vying for my attention at the same time.    My salad was pilfered.   It turns out we had lovers of olives, lettuce, salad dressing, banana peppers and cheese among the group—but not by the same children.    Five trips were made to the trash can to throw away messes and make space on the table for the food arriving.

But it was fun.   The boys are back tomorrow and everyone is looking forward to seeing their father. I’m looking forward to seeing my husband too.  

The Big Boy Update:  Every now and then my son chews on his shirt.   He pulls the front part of the collar up and puts in his mouth.  I was away for about an hour-and-a-half this afternoon, leaving my children with my best friend and her four girls.   When I got back I don’t know if it was insecurity or something else, but he’d chewed his shirt soggy.   He doesn’t do this often at all, but it was bad enough today that he asked me to get him a new shirt.  After I got him a second one, he was fine for the rest of the day and had fun with everyone.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My mother was trying to put drops in my daughter’s eyes yesterday.   She made several suggestions but my daughter was having nothing of it.   She told Mimi firmly, “I have a plan” and would hear of nothing else.   Mimi followed her lead and they were able to find a place to put the drops in that suited my daughter’s, “plan”.

Ballroom Dancing

When I was a youth (which was some time ago by my reckoning) I was put into Junior Cotillion classes by my parents.   I wasn’t keen on the whole thing at first because I was of that age where boys were in the unnamed land between gross and desirable, but there was no getting out of it.   We would meet once each week and be given a lesson in manners by the elegant lady who was our instructor.    She taught me many things that didn’t seem important then, but I remembered.   Those words of wisdom have served me well over the years.

We sat in chairs around the perimeter of a large room and after the talking part was over, she would teach us a ballroom dancing step with one of the boys or girls to help her demonstrate.   Then, she would tell the boys to get up, walk across the room and ask one of us to dance.  We, as ladies, were not allowed to refuse or act upset by the invitation in any way—because this was what polite ladies did.

We would then try mightily to repeat the step she’d taught us, stepping on each other’s feet and stumbling through the beat.   We’d switch partners and practice some more.   By the end of the night we had it down and had added it in to the steps we’d learned in prior classes.   It didn’t seem fun at the time, but I grew to like it and later took some ballroom dancing lessons as an adult.  

There is a subtle communication that happens between the two partners, with the man leading.   The phrase, “where the man goes, the lady must follow” comes to mind.   It became easy after a while, with me not even thinking about what I was doing, just following along to the lead of my partner.

I’m still doing that ballroom dancing now, only it’s not with a man, it’s with my daughter.   She’s the lady, and she has no choice but to follow the lead of the person directing her either by hand, voice or gentle pressure on her shoulder.    She’s getting fairly good at letting someone else direct her when she doesn’t know the location or situation.  

It’s not a skill I would wish for a child to have to learn so young, but she’s a child and is resilient and doesn’t seem to mind letting someone else take the lead to keep her safe and protect her from bumping into things and hurting herself.

The Big Boy Update:  We were going to our favorite sushi restaurant tonight.   My son, upon hearing we were going there said, “Sushi Thai is my favorite.   Dunkin Donuts is my least favorite, because it makes me fat.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter loves the salad with ginger dressing at sushi restaurants.   Tonight when I thought she was done and was about to move her bowl away she stopped me and said, “no mom, I want to drink the juice”.   I told her I liked to drink the extra ginger dressing at the bottom of the bowl too.

Dragons Aren’t Real!

My son came inside the other day mad and upset.   Some sort of game had been going on with the friends on our street that involved dragons.   Some of the children (who were also standing in my living room) attested that dragons were real.   My son was on the opposing team with no one else standing by him, insisting dragons weren’t real.

What do you do?   What can you say?   We face this all our lives when we encounter someone who has firm beliefs in something we don’t share.   Yelling at them and telling them what they believe is wrong doesn’t help.  

I told everyone that it was okay for some of them to believe dragons were real and for others to believe they were only pretend.   I said it was okay to believe different things but that didn’t stop us from still being friends.  

I asked if they could continue their game even though they didn’t agree?   They decided since there were no dragons in our neighborhood, that it would be okay.   The went back outside and I haven’t heard anything about dragons since.

The Big Boy Update:  My mother was helping the children get into the bath tonight.  Before he got in, my son was in the toilet and my mother could see he had a large amount of toilet tissue he was piling up in his hands.   She asked him, “do you need any help?”   He said, “no, this is new poop.”   Now this might seem like a strange comment, but you have to understand that “new poop” hasn’t been streaking his bottom, drying out and being a general mess to get off.   Good news is tonight he had only, “new poop” to deal with.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter brought home a, “Christmas present for next Christmas” today.   It was a surprise.   I couldn’t imagine what it was.  She said it took a while for the class to work on because they could only do a few of them at a time.   When we got home she very proudly brought out a jar of butter the class made from shaking heavy cream around during circle time.    She wants dad to see it when he gets home and keep it as a surprise.

That Spot You Didn’t Think to Clean

I was cleaning up after one of the many food events my children have daily at the bar seats in the kitchen.   I have heard rumor they get less messy over time—these things known as “children”—but I have yet to see it.  

Actually, that’s not true.  There were the high chair days.  Food was everywhere then, but less seemed to get into the mouth.   Now food goes in, but remnants still go everywhere.   The problem is, the children are mobile now.   You have to be quick to look up and see a chocolate icing-smeared child heading off to run their hand up the stairway wall on their way to lying down on the couch face forward.    Chocolate.   You heard me right.

For the most part we catch incidents like that.   And in large part the children do wipe their faces and hands after they eat.    They don’t wipe as thoroughly as I’d like, but it’s something.  Tonight as I was doing the cleanup of the bar counter where they eat, I did a brief wipe under the granite top under which their little legs and chair pulls up.  

What came back was not the color I was expecting on the white cloth.   I wiped a second time which provided even more horrific results due to the granite now being wet and the stuck-on substances having been dampened and loosened.

A thorough cleaning has been done and is on my “where mess hides” radar for future cleaning.   I suppose when they’re grown and gone I’ll miss the mess some day.

The Big Boy Update:  My son and I were going to his annual wellness check when we drove by a retirement community building we drive by every day.   He must have suddenly noticed it because he said, “Hey, is that the White House?”  I told him no, the White House was in Washington, DC and we  were several hours away from there.   He then said, “oh, I know why–it doesn’t have the American flag there.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I left my daughter in the car, alone, twice today.   The first time I went into the tailors to drop something off and watched her the entire time.   There wasn’t much need to watch her because I’d given her my iPad and she wasn’t budging.   The car locked on its own when I walked away and she had been told to stay put.   The second time was a few minutes later while I ran in to get a few things at the grocery store.   She wasn’t bothered in the least by me leaving.   It certainly made running the two quick errands faster.

Single Parents and Four Hours

I had an all day class today.   My husband is out of town on a ski trip with some guy friends, so I’m relatively on my own this week.    That’s not completely true, as I have help left and right, but it’s one less parent, which translates to twice the children, and sometimes it can feel overwhelming.

Yesterday I had a sitter watch the children while I was in class.  I got home and panicked because the house was a mess, the children were still in their pajamas and the grandparents were arriving in fifteen minutes for dinner.    We got ready to go out, but that still didn’t fix the messy house and get all the other things done that needed to happen before the children and I could respectively crash for the night.

Today I had help from my parents while I was in a second day of class.   They got my daughter to take her to her Orientation and Mobility session, took her back to school, got both children and took them to play therapy and then got dinner and met me at home when I got back from class.  

They stayed for a while and then headed out after a busy afternoon of children chauffeuring.    It was at the point when I arrived home though, at 5:10, with dinner awaiting me on the counter from my parents, that I started four hours of non-stop cleaning, putting up, bathing, changing, discussing, putting to bed, lunch making, email catchup for school and family, garbage, recycling, mail, bed remaking and, hell, I don’t even remember what else, but it was a solid four hours before I got down here to sit and write this blog post.

I don’t know how single parents do it.  They have my utmost respect.

The Big Boy Update:  My daughter is not what you would call a typical princess.   She doesn’t quite get into the princess image portrayed on our society these days.   Sometimes we’ll have people (strangers) talk to her who are trying to be friendly.   They’ll say something like, “Are you a princess?  Is pink for princesses?  I bet you love pink!”  My daughter is never quite sure how to respond when these conversations happen.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I lost my temper at my daughter today because she didn’t like something I said or did and maid an angry squeal/grunting sound at me.   I told her I was done responding to that sound and if she wanted me to help her in any way going forward, she could use her words.   Tonight, she remembered when she got mad and talked to me instead.

Dad Abandons Family

There is a calendar entry on the calendar my husband and I share with the above title for the next week.    My husband was invited with some friends to go skiing in Tahoe.   It was for a week and it partially overlapped with other relatives visiting, but we decided it was a good thing (as far as vacations go) and my husband booked the trip.

He and I were at the computers at the time he pressed the “confirm” button and he said, “I feel sort of bad, abandoning you and the children for a whole week.   I told him not to worry about it, I’d get some time back at another point.   But just to be sure he didn’t forget our sacrifice, the calendar entry doesn’t list dad in Lake Tahoe, it reads, “Dad Abandons Family”.

The Big Boy Update:  I came home from class today to find a glorious mess in several rooms.   The sitter had taken good care of some things, including making cupcakes with scratch made icing, but other things were a wreck.   Of note was the children’s room, which was covered in so much bedding and stuffed animal mass the children couldn’t even get clothes on to go to dinner (yes, they were still in their pajamas at 5PM).   The children cleaned up fairly well, with my son helping the most.   At dinner I was telling my father about the mess when my son said in a shy, sad voice, “mom, why did you have to tell him?”   It was then that I realized my son was upset he left the mess and thought I was telling on him.   I changed the story to how I was so impressed with their cleanup.   Later, just before my son climbed the stairs to his bunk bed, I knelt down and told him I was sorry about telling Gramps and would he please let me know if anything like that happened again so I could be sure to know what he wanted to be kept a secret just in our family?

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  We play “Up and Down” a lot with the children.  You say one “up” thing about your day and one “down” thing.  My daughter said the other night at dinner, “I don’t have a down, I just have a bunch of ups.”  So like my daughter…

Downhill?

My daughter’s vision is getting worse.   We’re not really sure why, but we’re all noticing it.   It hopefully is the cataract in the left eye that’s progressing.   When her retina surgeon saw her last week he said he wanted to wait to see what the right eye looked like at her next appointment in two months and then look at what needs to be done with the left eye (which has had nothing done to it yet other than increasing pressure).

It’s depressing, but we’re trying to remain hopeful.   It’s hard though.   There is just so much wrong with her eyes it’s hard to know what is getting worse, what she’s seeing, if she’s seeing anything with the right eye and how she’s coping and building skills to compensate.

Her vision impairment teachers talked to us on Friday at our IEP yearly re-evaluation meeting how they’ve seen her vision decrease and what they’ve noticed she’s been doing from an accommodation standpoint.   My daughter wants to wear her glasses all the time, including sleeping in them, which may mean they’re helping somewhat.   When I asked her tonight what they helped her see or which eye they helped with, she pointed to her right eye.

I don’t know if the right eye sees anything, but we’re going to hope it may be seeing something.

The Big Boy Update:  We were at a hibachi restaurant tonight with our family who’s been visiting from out of town.   My son was trying to get the last drop out of the soup bowl when he looked up and said, “Best.  Soup.   Ever.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I heard we were going to hear this from the children at some point because it was a common thing their classmates said at their level, but I hadn’t heard it until tonight.  My daughter was frustrated at me and said, “you’re not the boss of me!”