The New Girl

In Three Words

When I am in the process of beginning treatment with a new patient, I do an in-depth interview with the parents first. I ask a bajillion questions to learn as much as I can about what's happening, the patient's early years and temperamental style, as well as the family's structure, culture and the dynamics that keep everything in (or out of) place.

In that first meeting, almost at the end--after I've asked a bunch of dry (sometimes difficult) questions--there is an exercise I do with the parents, in which I ask them to describe their child's personality to me using only three words.

"Can you give me three words to best describe your child's personality? Don't think too hard, just the first three things that come to mind," is basically what I say.

Having the parents try to compress their impressions of their children into so few words can kind of distill them, concentrating and clarifying them. After having heard the prose descriptions of their child, the Three Word Descriptions sometimes sound like poetry. Often, after getting all the sad or scary stuff out of the way, the parents can focus on the positive. Sometimes, it's hard for the parents to get in touch with the positive because of the sad or scared. Whatever the case may be, the results of this exercise are usually very interesting and enlightening.

So, you want to give it a try? It's really kind of fun.

Here are mine:

The Girl: Intense / Tender / Sparkly

The Boy: Funny / Easy / Loveable

That Shit About Your Heart Walking Around Outside Your Body After You Have A Kid Is True. Or, Why I Want To Cry About A Game Of Freeze Tag.

"Unfreeze me!!" cried her cousin.

She came barrel-assing around the car, running to get to him, both arms extended. She collided with him, hands to tender tummy, and unfroze him--he stepped backwards, scowled and scolded.

"NOT LIKE THAT! THAT HURT!" and then he turned and walked away from her.

While she stood, frozen for real, the look on her face--heartbreak.

I watched from the porch, where my BIL and I were waiting for the bus to come, watching our kids work shit out. But that look of heartbreak...

It broke my heart.

I put myself in her place. Running, exhilarated, playing big-kid games, rounding the corner, excited to team with her cousin, against her little brother. Thinking she was doing something good, something right. Only to be met with disapproval, reproach. The confusion, the shame, it froze her solid. Even though the freeze tag was over.

***

She is getting bigger. She takes a bus to school. She dresses herself. She does homework. She opens her snack box by herself. She puts her pencil case in her cubby. She picks up her room and makes her bed. She keeps her library book on her self, like the teacher told her. She practices writing and counting.

For her, though, the challenges are mostly emotional. Her struggle isn't writing the numbers, it's withstanding the immediate and overwhelming frustration she feels if she can't do it perfectly the first or second time. The frustration is fast and furious, sometimes leading to impulsive and destructive acting out. Her struggle is in taking correction, trying it another way, listening and following suggestions. Keeping calm enough to listen and reason when she's upset.

When she was little (you may recall,) it was impossible for her to hold in the pushes and the bopping other kids on the head in group activities. When she got a little older, I learned more about her.She started to say to other kids, "You're standing too close to me!"  So we learned that her comfortable zone for personal space is almost twice the size of what would be considered average.

But now, as she gets bigger still, she's been trying. Really hard. Our behavior charts are about kindness, responsibility, and persevering calmly while doing something frustrating. She's been collecting "smiles" on her chart and feeling pride when she completes things that are hard to do with calm perserverance.

Back on the driveway, I watched her eyes well up with tears and my heart hurt. I helped them through it, giving each their lines to say. The Nephew gave her a half-hearted hug and I watched her try to discreetly wipe her eyes.

And then, before I could talk it through with her, the bus came.

She was quiet as we walked across the street. She climbed onto the bus, into the seat, and looked out the window. She raised a hand and gave a sad, little, wave. The bus pulled away and took my heart with it.

The incident has been forgotten, I'm sure. She will have shaken it off, distracted by the business of kindergarten. She gets to go to the Treasure Chest today to pick a prize. Tonight, the whole family is coming to sing Happy Birthday to her brother. There will be a couple small gifts for her, too, I'm sure.

The rejection that she felt this morning is probably already long gone for her. Yet, I am at home, with that persistent, vague, uneasy feeling of something nagging at the back of my mind.

Then I remember. That face. The quick swipe of the back of her hand across her eyes. Her sad little wave.

The breeze rattles through the hole in the middle of my chest.

I can't wait until my heart gets back.

 

Fat. And Skinny.

I went to pick them up from the gym's kids' club and my daughter looked at me, smiled, and out of the blue said to me, "I want to be fat, Mom, not skinny.*" At the sound of that sentence, my head spun and I looked at her and she had the nervous grin she gets when she's testing the waters, gauging reactions.

My heart started thumping. She has never, ever heard those two words uttered in our home. Never. Of this, I am entirely sure. Having made a conscious choice, I don't make comments, critical or otherwise, about my body or my looks or my weight--to her or others, in or out of her earshot, since becoming a mother to a daughter.

"Where did you hear that? Who said those words?" I asked, none too gently.

Sensing my intensity and upset, she froze, unsure.

I'm not naive enough to think this was never going to happen. I'm not even naive enough to think I had until middle school for it, as steeped as we are in this female-body-critiquing culture. A culture in which we feel free to assess, discuss, analyze women's bodies, their weight, their shape. A culture in which women casually and openly castigate themselves and their bodies in the presence of their impressionable children (both boys and girls,) passing to them the mantle, unconsciously, modeling the expectation and the behavior and the language.

Fat. And skinny.

*****

When I was a girl, my mom was fat. I knew this not because she looked appreciably different from the moms of my friends, not because she was disabled in any way by her size, not because other kids made fun of her or picked on me because of her.

I knew she was fat because she told me she was.

Consistently, overtly, expressly, regularly.

Not only was the messaging that she was fat, overweight, heavy, but that she was different and unsightly and embarrassing to me. I remember the sharp spike of fear, bewilderment and guilt I felt when she'd accuse me of being embarrassed to be seen with her because of her weight. I wasn't. I told that last to my therapist once and she replied, "Weren't you?" It was her way of asking me to think past a reflexive statement, perhaps a defense.

So I gave it some real thought.

And no, I really wasn't embarrassed. That had been my mother's projection. I didn't see her the way she saw herself. Even now, when I look at pictures of her from that time, she was surprisingly groovy in the seventies, with her frosted hair and her white polyester and her big glasses. She had maybe an extra 30lbs. That's it. And although she would become heavier through the years and end up morbidly obese (and truly different looking than the moms of my friends) when I was a kid, I only knew what she told me.

As confusing as it was.

****

Back in the gym, I struggled to cool down. Reeling in the tangled lines of the still-intense past and the dreaded worst-case-scenario futures, I forced myself to just be present in the moment with my 5 year old daughter, who just heard some words for the first time and was trying them out. (*Because if she's telling me she wants to be fat and not skinny, I'm thinking she may not totally understand the finer points.)

So I changed the subject and we walked to the car. When we were underway and both facing forward, I asked, "Do you know what 'fat' means? Do you know what it means to be fat?"

And her answer was, "It's not a nice thing to say about someone. A girl called someone it at recess and the teacher told us all it wasn't a nice word to say."

She had no idea.

So, we had a talk. A long talk about words and how they can have more than one or even two meanings. A talk about body sizes and shapes. About differences. About how people are built, bigger and smaller, and how we eat and why we exercise, and brush our teeth and take baths and how people look different on the outside but everyone has feelings on the inside. And we talked a little about the world.

And I had to tell my sweet girl that there are people in this world who think that if a person is 'fat', she's not smart or healthy or worthy of love. There are people in this world who call themselves 'fat', condemning themselves, in their heads or out loud.

And there are people in this world who call others 'fat', as a taunt. As a way to say, "You're different from us, you're not good enough."

Some of them are 5 years old, on a kindergarten playground.

As confusing as that is.

Scarred.

I just knew something was wrong--in that awful way you just know. She was running, having been sent to her room, and she slipped and fell. Whacked her face. She got up, crying, and continued to her time out. And I just knew.

So I followed her to her room.

"Did you just hit your face, baby?" I asked.

She held her face in both hands and I sat on the edge of the bed and looked down.

Blood.

Big, fat, crimson, drops on her purple sheet.

"Are you bleeding?" I asked, prying her hands away.

Flowing. Pouring. In a way that was so, so, wrong, I instantly knew beyond any doubt, we were headed to the emergency room. And stitches.

The beautiful ingredients for my dinner were all prepared and laid out, ready. I'd baked a cake for my sister's birthday. And just like that--our plans changed. In an instant, everything was different. Upside down.

My emotions went wherever they go when there's a crisis. Away. I become super calm and organized. Getting the directions to the best ER and heading out with a panicky pre-schooler, leaving behind my husband, son and our soon-to-be-arriving dinner guests. Luck was with us and the hospital was great and we were in and out in under an hour. I know. I KNOW.

They swaddled my baby and stuck her with a needle and sewed her lip back together, while she cried and yelled, "I want to leave RIGHT NOW!" and, "EVERYONE TAKE YOUR HANDS OFF ME!" and my belly got woozy and my heart broke into a bazillion pieces, even when my head was all, "It's only four stitches. Get over yourself. SHE'S FINE."

And she was. Is.

Fine.

There's something about it, though. About the knowledge that one minute you can be fixing an awesome dinner and the next minute, things can, well, change. Something about those tense moments, that time when realization blooms and you know--know--things aren't going the way you thought they were going to go. For whatever reason, for me, it dipped right into the place where the memories surrounding my mother's dying live. The place where tragedies alter not only your plans, but your life. That place is hard to find when you're looking for it but you recognize it in a flash, when you're passing through it.

I know a woman whose son was attacked by a dog. He required stitches all over his torso, arms and legs. His mother grieved for his skin, for the scars that would mark him now, forever. Even though I was childless at the time, I understood her sadness, her sense of loss. On the way to the hospital with my girl, I remembered her. I remembered her grief as I thought about my daughter's face. Flawless up until now. This will be her first real scar.

When I got home, I ate the take-out The Man ordered after he'd butchered the dinner I'd intended. We sang happy birthday and cut the cake. I ate a piece as big as my head. And when everyone went home and the kids were snuggle-buggle in bed, my feelings came back from wherever it is they go in a crisis.

And I bawled my eyes out, even though she's fine.

She'll have a scar.

And so will I.

Do You Like Onions In Things?

There are a few things that are absolutely GRATING ON MY FUCKING NERVES right now. Would you like to hear about them? [Too Bad.] Oh, good! Here we go.

The first thing is that every single morning for the past, oh, week or so, my son has been waking up at 4 in the morning, weeping and wailing, without stopping until I go in there, armed with a bottle, medicine and [my revenge] some saline nose spray and the nose frida. Even the time change did not disrupt his schedule and he seemed totally oblivious that the 4:00 was really 3:00. He just skipped right over that adjustment and kept on rocking the 4am wake up. As soon as the door opens and I present myself, grumbly and pissed off, the crying magically ceases and he says, 'Mama. Mama.' And then my irritation leaves and the dull resignation-slash-warm-sappiness-AKA-he's-only-little-for-a-little-while-feeling sets in and I hug him up and change his diaper and give him medicine and chuckle at how much he HATES the nose frida. I sit on that fucking exercise ball and give him a bottle and he is SO DROWSY. Then I go to put him in the crib and he twists his little bendy ass around so that he goes in STANDING UP.

Standing.

At 4:30am.

What the fuck is up with that, I ask you?

Anyhow, usually the crying part is over then and either he's up talking and laughing to himself or he is pretty quiet and falls back to sleep. I am, as you could probably guess, completely awake by that time and so, you know. I wake up grouchy and irritable and ill-prepared to handle the rigors of my days. And when I say rigors, I mean my daughter.

Which brings me to the second thing: she is making me nuts. Nuts! With the (intensified and inexplicable) baby-talking! And the (renewed after a long, lovely absence) Crazy-Ass Temper Fits! And the (brand new) Ignoring Me-Slash-Selective Mutism! Where she refuses to answer the simplest question! At all! I don't have to provide you with an illustration of how all three of these behaviors combine to create the MOST ANNOYING SITUATIONS IN HISTORY, do I? I didn't think so. You can trust that they DO. Every day, multiple times a day.

I am threadbare and due mostly to the sleep deprivation, my patience is thiiiiiiin. I find that I have an annoyed edge to my voice whenever I'm talking to my daughter and today it started at 7:03am, when she refused to say good-morning or give me our customary Morning Hug and insistently said the baby word, 'Powwnnyyyy,' over and over, to indicate, I suppose, that she wanted me to find her lost pony.

Can you hear that clicking? It's my MARBLES. I'm losing them one by one.

Anyway.

If it wasn't for my promise to myself that I was going to post more regularly, I'd be suffering in silence [and you wouldn't have had to suffer through this post.]

Before I go back to drinking coffee and breathing deeply before tackling the giant job of unloading the diswasher, I'll tell you the story behind the title of this post.

After my mom died, The Little Sister and I went back to my hometown to have Thanksgiving with my dad and my grandfather. We were making all the family favorites in our own way, really, and worked our aaaaasses off. We included my grandmother's mac and cheese. My sister, however, omitted the grated raw onion on top, since none of us liked it anyway. The crunchy texture just didn't suit us. This was our first-ever time making a Thanksgiving dinner. And we were without my mom. It was tough.

If you've never read about my grand-dad, this might not make too much sense but you have to know that he's sort of...er...difficult. Kind of obsessive and nit-picky and before and during dinner he made a series of remarks and comments that I'm SURE he thought were benign but were actually most annoying.

So.

After dinner, my grandfather was telling The Little Sister how good everything was. Then he said, 'Do you like onions in things?' And my sister was all, 'Huh?' And he said, 'Do you like onions in things?' And my sister was all, 'Uh. Yeah, sure.' And he said, 'You know what's good? For the Macaroni and Cheese, you take an onion and you just grraaaaate that onion right on top.'

And I had to suppress my deep, deep, laughter when my sister leaned in and muttered, 'You mean like how you're grrrraaaatting my nerves right now?'

It Gets Better. Special Mom's Edition.

When I dropped off my son at the gym's Kids' Club, (REFUSING TO SPELL CLUB WITH A 'K',) there was a very upset little girl, being held by the worker. "She's new," I heard her say to another mom. About 20(ish) minutes later, as I went in to change my [gym-pooper, WTF?] son's diaper, I saw the little girl, still being held, still crying--looking much, much worse for the wear.

"I called once and the mom said she was going to leave her because she needs to get used to it but I think she needs to come and get her," said the sweet, 19 year old girl who works there.

I had a series of flash-backs. Waiting until my daughter was 15 months old to even ATTEMPT going back to the gym, knowing that she'd be a screaming mess. Going every single day for a MONTH, staying for only 10 minutes because she'd be crying her face off. Feeling hopeless and trapped and like I'd never, ever be able to resume a normal life. Crying on the way home out of frustration and depression, aching to have one thing be easy. Just one.

When the mother came in, she reached for her baby and while soothing her said, "Well, I got 15 minutes. I guess that's a good first day. Should we come for 15 minutes tomorrow, too?"

I wanted to say something encouraging. My impulse was to reach out and relate. And then I thought, "This is probably her third kid and you're going to look like a know-it-all-idiot-assvice-giver."

But there was something about her. About her voice. I held my breath and jumped in.

"Is she your first?" I asked.

"Yes, she is," she said.

I told her how she reminded me of my daughter. About how my girl had colic and was touchy anyway, ("Her TOO, oh my lord!") and how I waited to bring her and how I would bring her every day for only 10 minutes, knowing ahead of time I'd be called and how I'd cry on the way home.

"But, you know," I said, "it gets better."

I told her how my girl adjusted and then, one day, it was like a switch was flipped. That once she was a little older and had a little more practice, things like going to the gym became much easier.

"How long did it take her?" the mom asked.

We are sensitive, I think. Sensitive to parenting differences or child temperament differences that look like they might be caused by parenting differences. Sensitive to others' comments or questions or suggestions or, let's face it, assvice. Feeling (or actually being) criticized for doing this job that is exceptionally difficult most of the time. We make judgment calls every day, in charge of these dependent little people and we hope, most of us, that we are choosing Right most of the time.

But being called to the carpet, so often by people who have no business doing the calling, can and does chafe, I think. It scrapes us up. Makes us a little raw. So that even a slight breeze can sting. It also makes me reluctant to try to comfort or connect, lest I step on a nerve or a feeling. Lest I unknowingly take a loofah to an already exfoliated, or maybe thin, skin.

It can be a fine line between, "Oh, man, I've been there and it really DOES suck," (i.e. I understand and empathize) and "I've been there, done that and got over it," (i.e. Yeah, yeah, they all go through it, suck it up.)

It makes me think of this issue that I had with The Man. Every once in a while, he would observe or be subjected to something that usually only happens to me, the primary care-giver. Like, TLNG would become hysterically unhinged because he put the wrong number of raisins on her plate, for instance.

"Wow," he'd say, "what's up with THAT?!"

"Welcome to *MY* world," I'd say.

He'd get angry and upset and it had to happen a few times before my sleep-deprived mind was sharp enough to inquire-slash-figure out what the fuck was happening.

In welcoming my husband to *my* world, I was offering what I *thought* was a humorous kind of empathy. I was trying to say, 'RIGHT?! Who knew that having exactly EIGHT RAISINS was the KEY TO HAPPINESS? Today?'

But what he heard was more like, "Yeah, WHATEVER. I deal with this shit like EVERY FUCKING DAY, dude. You're not telling me anything I DON'T ALREADY KNOW. BETTER THAN YOU."

Since we're married and we like each other, we worked that out and it's all good, now. The mother wrestling her kid into a cart in the produce section, or the mother whose kid is standing still in the middle of the sidewalk I'm trying to walk on, or the mother whose toddler is face-down, screaming in the aisle of CVS isn't likely to give me a second chance, though.

 I don't know where I'm going with this, really.

Except that like gay teenagers, I think that sometimes moms of newborns or toddlers or multiple children in challenging phases need to hear it, too.

It gets better.

"And you know, this one here," I said, pointing to my son, "he walks right in and never looks back, so there's always hope for the next one."

She sighed and chuckled and looked at me, "Thank you," she said, "thank you, so much."

The Slackerest Halloween Crafts EVER.

So, on Twitter I've been posting pics of some of the [lame-ass] quick & dirty Halloween Crafts that I've been doing with TLNG.  Cara Mama asked if I would mind sharing the 'How To' of the Notorious Ghosts, Spooky House and Glitter Pumpkin.

And so, here we are. 

There are a few things you should know before we get started.  1) I am a half-assed crafter. At absolute BEST.  2) I made these crafts with a 3 year old. 3) I made them without the intention of posting a 'How To' and so there is no real photo-documentation of a step-by-step nature, which would seem to be the bare minimum requirement of a for-real craft post (see Number 1.)

The key to doing almost any [half-assed] craft with kids is knowing and respecting their developmental level-slash-attention span.  Trying to do too much or something too complicated usually ends in tears of frustration (yours) and time outs (theirs. Or, maybe yours too.)  For a 3 year old, I'd say 10 minutes TOPS, with the task being simple-like.  Even pre-making things for the kid to assemble and embellish works well, too.

M'kay.

The Notorious Paper Towel Ghost Slacker-Craft

Materials:
Newspaper or other kind of paper
Paper towels (or tissue or square pieces cut from an old sheet--which would cut down on the half-assedness, though, so do that at your own risk.)
Tape (or yarn or string)
Permanent marker
Thread (or yarn or string)

Process:
1) Wad up a little ball of newspaper.

2) Wrap paper towel or tissue around it and use tape or yarn or string to tie it off, underneath the 'head' of the ghost.

3) Let your kid get her grubby mitts on the Sharpies, like she is always DYING TO DO, to make a spooky face (or a nice one! Ghosts can be nice too! Crazy-skerrd of everything 3 year olds will tell you that! REPEATEDLY!)

4) Tie a piece of thread around the neck and to the back of the ghost head and then use tape to fasten it wherever. (You don't need to tape it up the back of the head if you want them to dangle from the ceiling but it will keep them 'upright' against a window or whatever.)

They look a little spooky this way...BoooooOOooOoOOOoOOooo!

 

The Spoooooky House Slacker-Craft

This one came about because after the ghosts, my kid said, 'Why don't we have a Spooky House for the window, Mommy?'

'....'

So I looked on The Internet for 'Spooky House Template' and got one to [copy from] inspire me.

Materials:
Black, yellow & green construction paper
Scissors or exacto knife
Tape
Glue stick

Process:
1) Use pen to [copy] approximate the outline of the Spooky House.  Keeping in mind (as all half-assed, slacker-crafters will) that the lines on the Spooky House are not meant to be straight. So, your usual [crooked as hell] eyeballing it will be fine. NO NEED FOR A STRAIGHT-EDGE!! (The Call of the Slacker-Crafter.)

2) Using the side of one scissor blade (or an exacto) cut out the window parts. Use the scraps to cut out a few [blackbirds. bats. blackbirds.] bats.

3) Layer the green under the black and tape on.

4) Layer the yellow behind the black so it shows through the openings. Cut a big rounded top, to look like the moon.

You can see how [fookackt it is] it's just layered. And crooked.

5) Glue-stick (Or half-ass tape, like I did) on the [Blackbirds. Bats. Blackbirds.] bats and tape the whole shebang, face-out, onto your window.

  Come Eeen. If you dare. MMwwwaahahahahaaa!

 The (Actual Real Craft) Glitter Pumpkin (AKA: Bastardized Martha Stewart for 3 year olds.)

This one made me LOL. I happened to watch a 4 minute On Demand 'Glitter Pumpkin Craft' clip from Martha Stewart.  My kid said, 'Mommy, can we do what that woman did?'  She even remembered the directions.

So, how is a Half-Assed Crafter supposed to say no to THAT?

We got some fancy-ass glitter and we used the pumpkin that she *picked* at her preschool.

Materials:
A Fuck-ton of Fancy-ass glitter (or, you know, a fuck-ton of regular glitter) of your kids' color choice.
Cookie sheet lined with paper
Paint brushes
Disposable bowls
School glue (in one of the bowls)
Acrylic Paint for stem (I used old ass acrylics that were laying around.)
Small pumpkin

Process:
1) Put the pumpkin on the cookie sheet (Martha said to never pick it up by its stem but TRUST, we used that bitch like a HANDLE) and brush school glue* on half the pumpkin.  Use a teaspoon to scoop glitter (out of another bowl) and sprinkle it all over the glued area.**

*I gave her a brush for [smearing the fuck-all out of the glue] spreading the glue and I used my brush to wipe the glue trail off her brush and to even out the glue she [smeared the fuck-all-OVER] applied.

**I turned the pumpkin around and around and up and down to present her with 'holes' for her to 'sprinkle' (read: dump entire contents of spoon directly DOWNWARD.)

2) Wait for that half to dry. (I did a pre-bought easy crafty to do in between, I KNOW.)

3) Repeat on the other side.

4) Wash your glue brushes.

5) When it's reasonably dry, get a little acrylic paint (a darkish color) and put it in a bowl. Dip the brush in and paint the stem.  (This step might be optional but it really makes it look pretty.)

 

.

 

YOU ARE WELCOME WOULD-BE HALF-ASSED SLACKER CRAFTERS!

Happy Halloween

 

 

In This Video, The End Is The Only Part Worth Watching.

It is in silhouette because The Man didn't turn on the light before he started shooting.  The subject is TLNG [totally doing some Fucking Evil Mastermind bed time stalling] busting out one of her nightly *dances* for us before she retires to bed.

It's only 20 seconds of dark, ill-framed, jiggling-camera nonsense.

But you Absolutely Must watch until the end.

Because, it's like the title says.

I suppose it could be just me who finds this hilarious.

But if you don't find it at least a little amusing, I don't know that we can be friends.

Go Ahead, Kid. Go On Ahead.

She said this to me while I was anchored in one bathroom (ahem) and she wanted to go and brush her teeth in the other.  I asked her to wait for me because she can't turn on the water by herself. 

She said, 'It's okay, Mommy,' and then she hooked her little pointer finger around her body, aimed it toward the other bathroom, 'I'm gonna go ahead.'

And then she took off.

I had a momentary flash of panic, thinking about her eating the toothpaste, or emptying the soap dispenser or massaging the hair conditioner into her skin or any of the other bazillion things she does [for no fucking sensible reason] while experimenting in her environment. When I finished my business (ahem) I followed her into the other bathroom to find her standing on her stool, trying to squeeze the last of the kid toothpaste onto her brush.

She is no stranger to the impulse to do things by herself.  But then again, what kid isn't? Do you know a mother of a toddler who hasn't heard, 'NO! I'LL DO IT MYSELF!!'? 

One of the things I found most amazing about having a baby was how...automatic the development was.  How the natural drive to watch and learn and grow and do just..unfolds, for the most part.  How I didn't have to *teach* my kid to use a fork because she saw US using forks and so wanted to use them too.  (My son is doing this now and for whatever reason, it STILL blows me away that he knows what to do with a fork and attempts to use one at every meal.)

As my daughter has gotten older, the tasks are bigger, more complicated (read: frustrating,) with actual repercussions for failed attempts (read: giant messes and/or minor injuries.)  She wants to 'help' me cook or sweep or pour things.  She wants to dress herself or carry her own things down the steps instead of hold the railing.  She wants to undress and bathe herself.  Shit like that.  Despite my ongoing fascination with the process of her development and my admiration of her growing independence, it isn't always as easy to embrace her wish to 'mix the eggs' as it was for me to hand her a fork.

But I really try to do it.  I try, as best I can and as often as is practical, to give up control of the universe...her universe, I'm saying.  I believe it's important to let her pick and choose, to let her help, let her do and try and spill and tear.  To let her tape and clean and fix what's she's broken or spilled or torn.

For whatever reason, it's not extremely difficult for me.  Perhaps it's my age (ahem) or the fact that in my profession I practice giving up (the illusion of complete) control to the children with whom I work, in an effort to help them to help themselves.

Recently, I experienced my first-ever parent/teacher conference.  It was a 'Listening Conference,' during which I was supposed to tell the teacher my goals for my daughter.  It was so hard for me to refrain from bombarding the teacher with questions, I can tell you that.  At some point, when we were discussing my girl's difficult transition, she said this:

'This first time away from home, it's harder for mothers than it is for the kids.  It's hard for moms who are used to knowing every single thing about their kids lives, to have them go out into the world.'

Without really thinking it through, I responded:

'Not for me, it's not.'

I went on and softened it up, a little.  I didn't want to sound like a total contrarian.

Or a reptile. 

It's just that...well, it's not more difficult for me than it is for her.  At least not for this two-day-a-week-preschool experience.  I don't know why other than--like I said, maybe my age. Maybe my temperament.

Or maybe it's that I'm still fascinated by it. Fascinated by her. By who she is becoming.

Pulling into the pick-up circle and seeing her grimace and pat a neighbor's arm because the little girl is crying for her own mommy is like watching one of those time-lapse photographs of the blossoming of a rose.

I hope that there will be more than enough time for me to ache over her hurt feelings I'm not able to fix or to get upset about the mean girls at her lunch table or to want to let the air out of her cheating boyfriend's tires. 

For now, I am just utterly captivated--watching her spin out into the world, sparkling like she does, shining cut-crystal rainbows everywhere.

How She Ended Up On The Living Room Floor, In Her PJ's And Watching TV At Lunch Time.

My girl started preschool.  And so far, the reviews are mixed.  I think she likes it.  She likes everything they do there.  It is an amazing place with an actual curriculum, for pete's sake. There are some farm animals, a little green house, gardens and two play grounds, complete with a water table and a gigantic sandbox. She likes the teacher and the aide.  She goes to the bathroom there, with no issue.  She washes her hands, sits in circle time and has her snack ("Cookies and apples, today!")

The only problem is, I'm not there.

"I want you to staaaaay, Mommy!" She pleads with me every time.

(I find it interesting, her choice of words. She never says, "I don't want to go," she says things like, "I don't want to miss you, Mommy," or "Can you stay with me?")

It's been a tug and pull on my heart, for sure, the moment of weeping before they whisk her out of my car, but perhaps less so than for some.  I signed my girl up for this, not for the educational/academic benefit but mainly because I think she needs the experience of being with adults apart from me, in a setting where her cooperation is expected and required.  She needs to learn and get used to routines outside our own, in close proximity to other kids, whose need for personal space may be, uh, less expansive than her own.

I wish, though, that I could be a fly on the wall.  I wish that I could see how she interacts with the teacher and the other kids when I'm not there to hide behind or cling to, or to remind her to stop chewing on her finger.  But having had loads of experience in school systems and with first time parents' anxieties, I've resisted writing copious notes or lurking outside the door to see how she's doing.  I've used the valet service instead of walking her in and then having to peel her from my legs to say goodbye.  I'm waiting to volunteer in her room until I know she's [not going to stick to me like a burr when it's time to leave] anxiety free about being there.

I'm doing what I can to help ease her transition.  Even though she's only going two days a week, there have been other *behavioral indicators* that she's having a little more anxiety than is usual for her.  She's having trouble falling to sleep again.  She wants only me again (after a blissful but short-lived period of time during which she preferred her father.)  There's also just the joy of being three.  Sassy.  Fresh.  Whining. Whining. WHIIIINING. [Trying to drive her mother to eat chocolate cake at 9:00 AM] Getting 50 time-outs before lunch. Crying when I have to go to work (ONE DAY A WEEK.)

So, today I asked her what she wanted to do. 

And she said, "Nothing." 

I said, "Nothing?  What do you mean? Where do you want to go today?"

She said, "I don't want to go ANYWHERE.  I just want to STAY HOME."

And this is what I heard:

"There's just been a lot, lately.  I'm feeling kind of stressed.  I didn't sleep well last night and I just want to hang out here, with you, and veg on the couch.  I need a Mental Health Day."

And, you know, so do I.