Boys
The two month love train is about to leave the station. From New Year’s Eve to Valentine’s Day, it can feel like open season on singles. I personally feel an affinity for the groundhog who slips off to dreamland from October until the beginning of February (but I would settle for being able to sleep in until eight a.m. once in a while). I didn’t realize how vocal I had been about my distaste for Valentine’s Day until I heard my words coming out of my youngest son’s mouth the other night, “Gah! If I see one more every kiss begins with Kay commercial, I am going to barf!!” I am paraphrasing here.
Those words were spoken in a prayer by my son’s friend, Daniel, before we headed downtown to Atlanta last night. We were a ragtag group at best, several moms, a couple of dads and small group leaders, and a gangly group of seventh grade boys with a penchant for youtube and cracking themselves up. Our caravan wound it’s way through 5:30 traffic into the heart of the city on a unusually mild January evening.
Donald Miller, an author from the Northwest, posted a blog the other day about leading through fear. If you haven’t heard of him, run to Amazon (or the library), and grab any of his fabulous writing. His post was focused on leadership of people through fearful situations, but it got me thinking about parenting through fear. Until I became a parent myself, it hadn’t occurred to me that my parents were ever afraid or might not have known what they were doing. They were confident and fearless leaders to the three kids in our family and we slept well knowing we were loved and well taken care of. But that wasn’t the whole story.
The Technology gods have smiled on parents. It is now possible to look up your child’s academic records on a whim. No more children ”forgetting” report cards at school or dealing with that pesky, ancient white out to magically turn that F into an A! I happened to log on the other day when my 7th grader was home. ‘Um, whatcha doing?” he asked nervously as he spied the school logo on my screen. I smiled benevolently, “Nothing, just looking at your grades.” Cue the menacing organ music as the beads of sweat emerged on his forehead. “Is there anything you need to tell me?” I asked while leveling my gaze at him. This is the equivalent of bluffing at poker. My oldest never fell for this trick, but my youngest, God Bless him, always does and routinely spills without further provocation.
School starts for my children and myself in T minus 72 hours. Our county had the luxury of being one of the last to start back, so the boys were able to squeeze out a little more summer before doomsday arrives. My tenth grader’s battle cry for the past two weeks has been “I can’t go to bed this early (11 pm)! It’s still MY summer!!” Did I mention he has a bit of the dramatic to him? Next week, six a.m. is going to be quite the smack in the face for all of us.
Continue reading about Yo, sound the bell suckers, schools back in…
I have two growing boys and my grocery bill usually hovers around the equivalent of my mortgage every month. Thank God I had two brothers growing up or I would have been convinced my children were part of a Discovery Health show called “Help, I Can’t Stop Eating Everything Not Nailed Down”. I remember my mom unloading the grocery bags from the car and my brothers pawing through them like they hadn’t been fed in weeks! She took to hiding extra food in a hall closet to pace them, restocking the pantry after they were asleep (or in a food coma, I couldn’t really tell the difference). The most infuriating thing was that my brothers could eat hourly and not gain a pound. They are both getting close to their forties now, so it will catch up with them soon!
I had promised my son that we would spend the day at a local water park and that he could bring a friend along. This seems very generous but really it was a selfish way to keep me from having to ride the really scary slides, aka the water wedgie. So on Friday we picked up his friend and headed north to the park. It was a little overcast, but I slathered us all in enough sunscreen to block out any sneaky uva and uvb rays that tried to attack. I was still reeling from the price to get into the park (thirty bucks a person!) as we claimed a shaded beach chair. Short people under 42″ are slightly less expensive, but I apparently give birth to freakishly tall, full priced children. That price didn’t include the eight bucks to pay for the pleasure of parking in the blistering July heat or twelve more dollars for a locker. But we were headed for fun, so money be damned!
I was doing yet another load of endless summer laundry. It would seem that there was a FIFA soccer team living here not just three people if you looked at the pile of clothing in the laundry room, stacked up into a four foot pyramid smelling of sweat, pool chlorine and sun tan lotion. I grumbled under my breath as I stepped over the dog to shove the neatly folded clothes into my teenage son’s armoire. I swung open the door and sighed as I was staring at several empty soda cans and a dish growing something furry and penicillin-like.
The past week has been a roller coaster of emotion with the last week of elementary school for my younger son. It was also finals week for my older son’s first year of high school. We have been running full steam ahead this week in all directions with the house and our poor dog being woefully neglected. Lately I have had something akin to panic bubbling in my head as time seems to have sped up exponentially. I don’t like it one bit and I want to push pause for just a little while to savor time with them while we are all happy and healthy and here together.
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