When I was in college, my favorite cousin was visiting our family on Long Island one summer. During that stay, the family went to the beach. She and I were doing our own thing. We wandered down the beach, talking to one another and enjoying the summer freedom and sea breezes.
As we walked, we came across a pick-up soccer game in the sand. The players had pulled up garbage cans to use as goals. Some of the players noticed us and smiled, gesturing for us to join them.
We hesitated.
On the way home from the airport after our trip to Branson, MO, my husband and I sat in the back of the car and chatted with my dad and our oldest son sitting in front. My son asked me about the fastest speed I had ever gotten a ticket for.
For years, I got my hair cut at Walmart. I was too cheap to pay anyone more than $20 (with tax and tip) for a cut. Between small kids and my inability to justify self-care to myself, I didn’t get my hair trimmed often enough. When I did make the trip, it was typically an act of desperation.
When you don’t pay for a good haircut, you don’t get a good haircut. I would walk away with something that was only a shadow of what I really wanted – I went hoping for something low maintenance, fun, a little edgy. And finally, I got sick of going to the hairdresser only to come home feeling frustrated by the results.
So I started using our buzzer to cut my own hair.
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.
