Parenting Without a License

Like a Swiss train conductor

I know a lot of people divide the world into two camps – cat lovers and dog lovers. I think I know of a more precise way to cause more divisiveness in the world – let’s divide us all into those who are on time, and those who are always late.  Because there doesn’t seem to be much in the middle in those two camps.

I am the on-time sort. That’s not to say I am never late. But if I am – I practically fall all over myself apologizing. And I feel terrible when I am late and someone's waiting. At Sam’s school there are some kids who get there 10 minutes after the bell rings Every. Single. Day. I can see being late if your alarm didn’t go off (yeah, as if Sam would ever sleep in long enough for that to be an issue) or if your car didn’t start. But every day?

 

I grew up with a dad who in the on-time Nazi. Maybe it's the airline pilot in him (because we all know that planes are never late hehehe). There is probably no human trait he dislikes more than tardiness. The most angry I've ever seen my dad is when we've made him late, or if someone else is late. In fact -- he's one of those people who are always early, which I guess is a subcategory of the on-time camp.

 

Now, I agree that it’s good to try to be on time. My dad believes timliness is an important part of being a considerate person -- which is good of course. Where we differed was that he always treated someone who was late as someone who was intentionally telling him that his time was worthless. I always thought that was overkill. I mean, I doubt when someone’s always late they’re saying, “Jenn can wait, what else would she be doing if she wasn’t waiting for me?”

 

But the older and more crotchety I get, I kind of see where he’s coming from. Not with occasional lateness, but the chronic variety. Why should I have to wait in my car outside your door for thirty minutes when you knew I was coming and five minutes before I got there you said, “I’ll be right down.” Why should I stand around doing nothing for 45 minutes because you just couldn’t get out of the house on time? Why is, “I just can never get my act together on time,” a reasonable excuse for missing out on movies, making someone late back to work or making someone sit alone in a restaurant for a half an hour? Why should I have to tell you a dinner party starts at 6:30, just to make sure you’ll be there when the food is served at 7:30?

 

But the thing is, I find that most people who are chronically late think it’s some cute, endearing quality. “Oh you know me, I’m always late.” They NEVER apologize – it’s a given that they’ll be late, and they generally don’t consider anything less than 20 minutes late as actually BEING late.  And I have friends who good friends who are great people -- but they are always late and despite that I love them to death:) I don’t take it as a personal insult that I am left waiting around.  And I never purse my lips and tsk tsk them – I mean – it’s their lives, even if it is a bit annoying.

But seriously – where do you stand on this.  Do you think a sense of timeliness is inherent – or made.

Poke-what??

Let me tell you -- I don't get Pokemon. And Sam is obsessed. Like really obsessed. Like I think he's speaking in some weird language half of the time, as all he talks about is this world and these characters.

A typical day involves waking up and reading a Pokeon novel until I tear him away to come down for breakfast. Then he talks all about the different characters and their evolutions. Quizzes me on them and I always get the answer wrong. Tess knows them though, somehow.

Then he'll either draw some characters, look at his Pokedex on the computer, arrange and rearrange his binder of cards, and wonder who can come over for a trading playdate. And seriously, he's only interested in trading playdates.

Next he begs me to take his cards to school which I don't allow (ever since the day at daycamp some kid stole all the good cards out of his binder while he was swimming). I actually think the school bans them as well -- apparently they have taken over many a child's brain. After school it's time for the Pokemon show on TV, and he studies his Top 10 books while watching the show (which is bad folks -- it is really a strange show).

It's been a good two months of this obsession. It's the first "toy" that Sam has been gaga over. He had some cards last year but he didn't know how they worked. Now he talks about HP and attacks and I have no idea what he's saying.

Are there any other Pokemon addicts out there? Do you find it as annoying/confusing as I do? 

At least I guess I know what he's getting for Christmas....

p.s. Hair. So everyone on here votes for a cut. Everyone in real life thinks I should grow it back long. And everyone on Facebook says I should leave it this length and wear it wavy more like my Facebook picture.  I mean -- the three communities are unanimous in their advice!! And me? I am not sure. I get my hair cut and highlighted next Thursday (Summer -- I go darker in the fall -- lots of lowlights). So I have 8 days to decide. It's just hair -- but I can't decide!

Hair Monday

OK it's absoultely positively no secret that I hate my hair -- ever since "that day." It's that awkward just above the shoulders length that sooo does not suit a round face. And the mullet layers are now to just below my ear and look very bizarre. I don't know if I can keep letting it grow like this. I've considered bobbing it to the mullet layers. I've thought -- just stay the course -- it will get long again. But there's a reason I almost always cut it when it gets to this length -- it just sooooo does not suit me like this.

So, I was watching America's Next Top Model the other night (mock me if you must), and I adored what they did with Samantha's hair. So now I have a hankering to cut it SHORT again. But should I? Will I regret it? Is this style too young/trendy for me? I'd add a sideswept bang.  Your thoughts? (I wish I knew how to add a poll)

a) Keep the faith -- it will get to a nice longer length again

b) Do a short bob to get rid of the layers, and then grow

c) Go for a short do like below

How does your garden grow?

We have spent the vast majority of this summer creating a yard. At the beginning of the summer we had a yard o' mud, with giant five foot high piles o' mud in the back. Now? Well now we have a 50 foot long, two foot high rustic style retaining wall creating a two-tiered yard (one way to deal with living on a hill). We have dozens of trees and shrubs. We have a lovely composite deck with iron and cedar rail. We have a shed that fits in a narrow crook of the yard. We have a playhouse (ignore the swing, and slide, picture it with a fireman's pole instead) that is almost done. We had a landscape designer come up with a plan but the only way we could afford to do it all was to do it all ourselves. And by "ourselves" I mean mostly Doug.

We have major project fatigue. We didn't take any holidays this summer -- we just worked in the yard. And there were glitches. The shed was built in the driveway without taking into consideration that the end product probably weighed 1000 lbs. It took six neighbours to move the thing. We already had built our fence complete with a wrought iron gate that was too narrow for a Bobcat to get in through. So every stone for the wall (the lightest was 60 lbs!), every bit of dirt, every tree had to be moved back there by hand. Doug has wickedly cut arms after this summer. As soon as he finishes the playhouse I'll post before and after pics.

One of things that I am most pleased with is our vegetable garden. Because of early rains, the retaining wall wasn't finished until late June, so we didn't get our garden in until the first weekend in July. In these parts, you need to have veggies in by late May to expect any kind of harvest before frost. But we thought for this year we could just teach the kids about how veggies grow, and we could test different crops.

On the advice of a friend we built a square foot garden. In case you haven't heard of these -- they are meant for small spaces where you don't have the room to sow rows of seeds. Instead you build a large box, and divide it into square foot sections and plant a crop in each section. We took the same friend's advice and made the boxes two square feet. With the exception of tomato, pumpkin and onion seedlings, everything else was from seed -- which made the odds of success even more remote.

Well imagine our surpise when all of our crops just took off. I mean, they went gangbusters. The kids were in charge of the care of the crops (they even picked the seeds). They watered and weeded. And everything worked. We have more tomatoes than I know what to do with. We had crisp lettuce all summer. Loads of peppers, onions, parsley and carrots. Beans and peas with our summer BBQs. We even planted corn which is not supposed to grow in this part of the world but Sam insisted on trying. Let me tell you -- it is 5 feet high and there are four actual cobs on here. We got frost last week so it won't finish, but if we had it in on time we would have actual corn to eat. Even our crabapple tree yielded enough fruit to make six jars of jelly.

The funny story has been the pumpkins. I had never grown them before and I figured two pumpkin plants would be fine in a square foot garden. I had NO idea that the vines would go nutty. They took over the whole garden in the end. I also never knew we'd get large pumpkins -- I thought they would be baseball sized. But no -- we have four that are as big as my head. They are still green -- I hope they turn orange for Halloween. But the foliage was insane, as this picture will attest.

We still have a lot of work to do in the yard. We are building a stone patio and pathways next year. We have several more beds to build, and bushes and flowers to plant. But what I am most looking forward to is another year of seeing what my garden will yield.

 

There are times it's just hard to keep your cool

For whatever reason, the kids have been a challenge this weekend. Lots of opportunities to work on those parenting skills. This morning though -- man -- I couldn've used a time out.

Tess has been toilet trained for a long time. She's been completely out of diapers -- even at night -- since she turned two. So we are well over a year of underwear-wearing here. We have had an accident here or there -- but I can likely count them on one hand. And when it happens, I don't make a big deal about it. It's usually because we are in a different place and excitement is high.

Accidents happen, but it's hard not to make a big deal out of "on purpose."

Tess likes to pull up a laundry basket to Doug's sink and pretend to put on makeup when I am putting on mine. Today was no differnet. Except she was doing a distinct kind of dance on the basket. I reminded her -- you'd better get to the bathroom. To which she replied, "I don't have to go yet." Then the dancing and wiggling increased. I said, "Tess, you have your cool new butterfly jammies on, you'd hate to get them wet wouldn't you?" She said yes, but didn't head to the loo, rather she worked on pretending to do her eyeshadow. Then she asked, "mom are you doing laundry today." Without thinking, I told her I was. Then she said, "OK then, you can just wash these for me before bed tonight." Then she let her bladder go COMPLETELY.

I was flabbergasted. I basically couldn't speak for half an hour. I just put her in the shower, towelled her off, dressed her and put her in her room with the door closed. Without saying a word to her. I was that angry. 

And the thing is -- Tess didn't even question me, she knew she had crossed the line. But seriously -- I am not sure how I should have handled it. Have your kids ever peed themselves on purpose? 

Another first day

It's funny to look back over the first day of school pictures I've posted over the years. We live in an area of the world where you could literally get any kind of weather. Last year it was jeans and a t-shirt weather. The year before that it was stinking hot and humid. The year before that it was raining. The year before that we had a freak snow storm.

This year we awoke to gorgeous sunshine. It is Sam's first day of grade one and Tess's of preschool. I was so happy until I saw the thermometer. It was zero. As in freezing. I looked closely at some of my poor vegetables in my garden -- they likely won't make it. Good thing we harvested a lot on the weekend. 

But everyone was excited so we just added long sleeves and tights to the first day of school clothes. Sam is most looking forward to full days -- he hated the half day of school thing, he said he didn't get to do enough. Tess is excited to put her snack on the three year old shelf:)