Last night, three of our kids had dress rehearsals for their upcoming dance recital. If you told me as a young person or even as a young mom that I would be a Dance Mom one day, I likely would have scoffed at you. Yet watching my kids perform last night in their costumes gave me an unaccountable sense of pride. There were many wins yesterday afternoon. Everyone who needed hair, makeup, and tights without holes got them. We managed, against all odds, to make it to the studio on time, everyone in their appropriate costumes.
The Chaplain met us there, and we tag-teamed the little kids. I took scads of pictures that turned out terrible, as I knew they would, due to the dark purple walls of the studio and the unforgiving fluorescent lights. I had used both my camera and my phone so hard that by the end of the practice performances, the batteries for both were limping along and close to death. I thought we were finished, and the Chaplain and I started loading the Littles into the car.
If you have kids, how often do you bathe them? It depends a lot on their age, right?
Middle age kids tend to be a little stinkier, but need reminding to bathe regularly and put on deodorant if they wear it. With a little nudge, it’s easy for them to take care of things themselves… with prompting to turn on the bathroom fan, and a knock to remind them not to spend 30 minutes in there.
Babies don’t get baths unless you bathe them, but they also get a lot of “in between” washing of faces, hands, and backsides, and sometimes the parts that are attached to those parts when the mess creeps up and around. With them, bath time is almost 100% hands-on for the grown up.
Toddlers, preschoolers, and lower elementary kids are the ones who are most likely to have actual dirt on them, and they need varying levels of supervision in the tub, and help getting clean. We’re supervising a toddler to make sure they don’t drown, but the primary reason you’re keeping a close eye on the 4-6-year-old crowd is to make sure they don’t flood your bathroom and cause your tub to fall through the floor.
Pictured above, number Two in the kitchen of our first home, when she was one year old. We had just moved in.
When I was in college, I worked in a sporting goods store on breaks from school for a couple of years. I remember one of my coworkers rolling his eyes and sighing because his mom had made him, his dad, and his brother paint their kitchen for a fifth time because it wasn’t the right shade of yellow. I commiserated. Who does that?!
A few years later, I was married and living in our first apartment, the upper floor of an old house on Long Island. It wasn’t a typical apartment; the walls were painted shades of brown and gold. There was original dark trim and wood built-ins were throughout our upstairs dwelling. The kitchen had granite countertops and cheery, sunshine yellow paint.
The house our rental was in was situated in a strange way. It seemed as though it used to have a much bigger plot of land around it. It looked like some previous owner and had gradually sold off bits of the land to different developers, so that our street ended just after our house in a small sort of road that led past one more house and to a nursing home whose entrance was clearly visible from our kitchen window. You can just see the nursing home in the background to the right behind the trees in the photo above. (We used this pic in our immigration interview photo album, but that’s another story. Keep an eye out for it this summer.)
The nursing home employees would come outside to smoke on their breaks and it always felt like they were looking in our windows, but I hated to assume.
Last night, about an hour before bedtime, Six quietly told the Chaplain he didn’t feel good, and curled up on the sofa. A few minutes later, he was asleep.
An hour later, as we were putting everyone to bed, the Chaplain lifted Six off the sofa to transfer him to his bed. He found Six was burning with a fever a shade under 104. We feared he wouldn’t go back to bed, but after a dose of children’s acetaminophen, he snuggled willingly into bed and went back to sleep.
Three hours later, the Chaplain and I were reading in bed when I heard a cry coming from the room Six shares with his older sisters. I paused to make sure I had heard him. There it was again. As I walked into the room, Two made a dramatic pronouncement along the lines of, “If he does that all night, I’m going to die.”
Back in April, I mentioned I was trying a new plan for Mother’s Day. I told my family ahead of time what I wanted, and then tried not to feel guilty for asking.
My family delivered. A big part of my plan was not being responsible for preparing meals on Mother’s Day. I honestly can’t remember what we ate that day. Which is fine. Because whatever it was, I had nothing to do with it.
My family actually OVER-delivered, because they willingly let me get more family photos of them than they have in a very long time. We spent time outside together. It was relaxing. There wasn’t a lot of pressure.
It was just what I wanted.
