Conscientious

World English Dictionary
conscientious (ˌkɒnʃɪˈɛnʃəs)

— adj
1. involving or taking great care; painstaking; diligent
2. governed by or done according to conscience

My daughter is the personification of conscientiousness, as this letter to Santa (written in 6 different gel pen colors) will demonstrate:

Dear Santa,

Is it true that my friend Mia is on the top of the good list? It is very kind of you to deliver presents to all the kids so we can wake up and have a great surprise in the morning.

Is it true that elves deliver the presents like in Arthur Christmas?

For Christmas may I please have (these are some choices) a new set of sparkly gel pens, one of the Sims 3 games besides inapropreate ones like desil, (some words I don't spell right) a few webkinzes, or a furby. I know furbies are very expensive so I am just warning you.

By the way, for Sims 3 I already have the 1st Sims 3, generations, Katy Perry Sweet Treats, Showtime, and pets expantion pack.

If you get me a furby I would like a pink one or a purple one please. You should watch Eloise at Christmas time. It is a very good movie. Christmas and time are one word in the title.

Love,
Kyra

P.S. I will be in Texas

The Biggest Lie

A couple of Mondays ago, on the first day of the last week of school, a man we know, a nice, friendly, outgoing, fun-loving man with a daughter who likes to ride on his shoulders, and a wife who has loved him since high school, died in a car accident.

He was the father of one of my daughter's classmates. We received the news in an email from school on Monday evening.

I was the one who told my daughter, because my husband was out of town. At first she couldn't believe it, because she had just seen the man that morning when he dropped his daughter off at school. And then she did believe it, and she cried and cried for her friend who had lost her dad.

But the next day she panicked. I picked her up from school, and she asked outright - if this could happen to her friend's dad, then couldn't it happen to her dad too? I wanted to say no, that it would never happen to us, but she wouldn't believe that, not any more.

It's what parents do for their kids. We promise them that nothing like this will ever happen to our family. We know it's a lie. We know that we can't protect our daughter for her whole life, but we're playing the odds. We know that probably nothing terrible will happen to her during her childhood. And we hope that by the time she experiences her first huge tragedy she'll be old enough to deal with it.

Our daughter still believes in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny - no questions on those topics that day. But she kept asking where her daddy was, even though she knew the answer. He was on the road, driving home from a conference, a five-hour trip. She wanted me to assure her that he was OK, that he was going to be home shortly, and that he wouldn't have an accident. But she didn't believe me when I did. She insisted on calling his cellphone, and when he didn't pick up, she started to cry.

She no longer believes that nothing could possibly happen to her parents, that we will always be here, keeping her safe, and her world unshaken. Because now she knows that when we make promises like that, we're lying.

In the past, when she was afraid of ghosts in the shadows, or monsters under her bed, we told her that we would protect her. Her mommy and daddy would keep scary, bad things from hurting her. When she wanted promises that we would take care of her, that we would always be here, we gave them to her. And she believed us, and was reassured.

I'm not saying that we believed what we were saying. Of course we know that bad things can happen. We know that everybody suffers tragedies in their lives. We've already lived through a few of our own in the past. But maybe a part of us wants to believe it too, that nothing will happen to our family, that we have the power to protect our little girl, and to keep her safe. Maybe we want to hold on to that fantasy in the face of all evidence, just as tightly as she's still holding onto Santa Claus.

When my husband got home, my daughter threw herself at him. She wrapped herself around his legs and wouldn't let go. He sat down on the couch, and pulled her onto his lap and held her for a long time. They watched some TV. They talked about their day. And she clutched him, so tightly, until she was convinced that he was really there, and that he was OK. And after a long while, she was OK too.

We're grieving for Jim. He was a good man, and now he's gone, without warning and way too soon. We're grieving for his wife and daughter who loved him so, and now have to make a life without him. But there's something else, too. We're grieving our lost innocence. This happened to one of our own. It isn't our family this time, but it could have been, because for one of us, it is.

And now, at least for a while, we can't pretend otherwise.

The Naughty List

This is a topic I've been meaning to blog about for ages, but it always comes out sounding all whiny. It's about when you try to be a good parent, but end up being a bad parent instead. It's one of the most maddening aspects of parenting, and it happens all the time.

Case in point - the cheerleading incident.  Her  dad and I made it to every game. We took pictures, shot video, and were very enthusiastic. We put up with homework headaches one night a week for months, when she went to cheerleading practice after school instead of Homework Center. We bought the uniform ($50) the turtleneck ($7) the practice T-Shirt ($10) and the shoes ($5). When parents were "invited" to learn a cheer to perform with the kids, I missed work on two afternoons to go to practice and learn the routine, and then embarrassed myself in front of my friends and their children by performing a cheer at half time. I attended the final party/awards ceremony and made a snack. I organized the parents, collected the money, and bought a thank you present for the coach. The evidence is clear - I was a good parent.

Or was I? The team got a last-minute invitation to cheer at a school pep rally one afternoon, and I couldn't go because I had an important meeting at work. My daughter cried. She tried to help me understand how very important this was to her. Where were my priorities?

So I have to ask - did one missed performance undo all the previous support? Or worse, did all the previous support lead to a sense of entitlement? Is she spoiled and manipulative, and it's all my fault? Or you might ask how I could even support her involvement in cheerleading, an activity that is fraught with social and gender issues.

Come on!  That's just not fair.

I think that example is fairly clear. On balance, I think I was a pretty good mom. (And if you disagree, I'd prefer not to know about it.) But sometimes it's less clear. For example, there was the time my friend Laura had her two boys in the car. The apple she'd grabbed for breakfast rolled off the console and into the backseat, where the 3-year-old snagged it and took a bite. When he was tired of eating it, the 5-year-old grabbed it. When he was tired of eating it, he dropped it on the floor.

According to Laura, who was understandably cranky having missed breakfast, her naughty boys stole her breakfast, and then made a mess. That may be true, but the first thing I noticed when she told the story was that she has kids who voluntarily eat healthy snacks. My first thought was to be very impressed by her parenting. And the fact that they shared nicely without being prompted impressed me too.

Hmm.

Now that I'm a mother, I realize just how good my parents were, although when I was a kid, I could have made a good case for the opposite. I have to hope that my daughter will come to appreciate my parenting skills. Because the other day, she was so disgusted by them that she reported me to Santa.

I'm not making that up.

My daughter maintains an on-again, off-again correspondence with Santa all year.  It started when she was little, when we read her a picture book that gave her the idea that Santa would get things if she left them for him on the fireplace hearth.

The other day she left him this letter:

Sigh. The funny thing is that this happened when I was making a special effort to be a good mother. In two ways! I was baking a batch of cookies and asked her if she'd like to help. She loves to cook, so I envisioned a little girl time together in the kitchen, wearing aprons, sneaking bites of cookie dough, making a mess, and generally having fun.

Sometimes when we cook I give her creative license in the kitchen to make up recipes or to try new ingredients. But as an only child, she gets used to having her own way all the time, which has led to some selfishness that isn't going over well with her friends. Because I was making these cookies as a gift and I wanted them to turn out, I thought I could use the situation as a vehicle for a useful little lesson in doing things the way someone else wants to do them. I wanted her to help me, but I needed her to do things my way, and follow the recipe correctly.  She left the kitchen in tears.

And now I'm on Santa's Naughty List.

Figures.

Favorite Things

It's hard to shop for my father-in-law. He's one of those men who has everything he needs, and if there's anything he doesn't have, he's perfectly capable of getting it for himself.

I was musing out loud about what we could get him for Christmas, when my daughter had a good, practical idea. She suggested that we email him and ask him to tell us his favorite things - his favorite color, his favorite animal, his favorite food, whatever. She figured that would help us figure out what he would like for Christmas.

The answer that he sent us did not make the shopping any easier, but it was a wonderful answer, which seriously transcended the question. It was thoughtful, kind, and wise, and so lovely that I'm sharing it here:

Well my favorite color is blue and in a house where everything is red and black.

I haven't had a pet for years, but as a child I had a German Shepard as a pet. My father got him when I was two years old and he was by my side constantly until we moved into town when I was twelve years old. He died when I was thirteen and I still remember how the tears streamed down my face as I had to dispose of his body just as they are as I'm telling you this. His name was Ranger and I still use that name as my favorite pet.

I like almost all foods but my favorite is still homemade soup, almost all of them. I love reading and I am so far behind in my books, I'm ashamed. I love sports and I still try to play tennis as time and the health of the folks I play with permit.

I love the United States of America and have the greatest admiration for the Founding Fathers whose wisdom came up with a Constitution that is still working 235 years later. I love the people from every Nation in this world who have chosen this country as theirs. And I also give thanks to those many who have died defending our liberties.

This may be more than you wanted to hear from me but I also like granddaughters who like to coach their mother on how to dress.

Well I will go now and see if I can find something to eat. I'm pleased with your curiosity and we can continue this next week when you visit.

I love you all,
Joe

Remedial Bake Sales

I just don't get bake sales. You have to spend about 5 or 10 dollars on ingredients to make baked goods that will raise about 3 dollars in sales. Of course, if you factor in a mother's labor (which we never do) then you're spending more like 50 or 100 dollars to get those 3 dollars in sales. And of course you're not done, because you still have to give your kid money to buy something at the sale.

Decorated cupcakes - how much would you pay?

Back in college, I once took a class in the business school. I remember walking into the building one day to see a sign advertising a bake sale to raise money for the Entrepreneurs' Club. That still makes me laugh.

We would all come out ahead if the moms skipped the baking, and just wrote out checks for 10 bucks. But that's something only a bad mother would do.

OK - I can see benefits to bake sales too, besides the (little bit of) money that they raise. They can generate some publicity, and that's good, right? And there is the whole community-building aspect, which can be nice - people pitching in to contribute to something they value, people getting to know each other by volunteering together. And sometimes it's even fun to turn the baking into a project - planning with my daughter what to make, and then making it together.

Thinking about the positive bits helps, because the fact is that most of the time you can't get out of bake sales. So I'll pass along a few survival tricks I've learned through the years.

• Ghiradelli Triple Chocolate Brownie mix makes better brownies than any I've ever made from scratch, and they go together in about 7 minutes.
• Brownies are easy to slice if you use a plastic knife on them, after they're completely cool. I just learned this one recently from my mom. It's like magic.
• Food on a stick - this is a tip from my friend Annette. If you want your items to sell out quickly, just put them on a stick. One time she made cookies and put them on sticks. For the last bake sale she did something even easier - she put marshmallows on skewers, then dunked them in chocolate and sprinkles. They all sold. She says people can never resist food on a stick.
• More about food on a stick - also from Annette - you have to display it right. Don't put the food on a stick and then just lay it in a pan, or you don't get the benefit. You need to stand the food up, so it's obvious it's on a stick.

I'm guessing you all have some of your own tricks to share. I'd love to hear them.

When Herbicide Has a Name

Maria the mum

This fall we finally broke down and hired a landscaping company to do something with our yard. After a decade of gardening attempts and failures, and I'm sorry to say that I'm not putting too fine a point on this, I finally, officially gave up. My compost heap is filled with the evidence of the plant carnage I have wrought through the years. It's safe to say that I don't have a gift for gardening. At all. And after a decade of failure, I don't even like gardening any more.

So, we hired a company to fix things. And fix things they did. For the first time since we moved in, the yard looks great!

That's the good news. The bad news is that the pressure is on. We paid a talented professional a good deal of money to draw up a plan, and to do the work, and now we have to keep it up. And that's a lot of pressure.

Decorative grasses Grace, Greg and George

But then today, the stakes got much, much higher. Today, my daughter went through all the flower beds, and gave names to all the new plants. I couldn't believe it. I would have been plenty happy to keep the yard looking nice, and the flower beds weeded. I would have been happy to learn a thing or two, like the types of plants we have, and suggestions for care. But it turns out that's not enough any more. Now I need to be able to address them by name. Just to give you an idea - we have a shrub named Sarah and another named Leana, a day lily named Amanda, some creeping flox named Tommy, Jonathan, and Samantha, and a hosta named Kayla.

It's a given that some of these guys aren't going to make it. It's a sad fact that I don't know how to prevent the widespread death and suffering of the plants in my yard. And now it just got personal. I have a horrible suspicion that there are going to be dozens of little plant funerals in my future.

Halloween Costumes

My daughter decided three things about her Halloween costume this year. First, she wanted to be a black cat. Second, she wanted me to be a black cat too. Third, she wanted us to make the costumes.

I was delighted, and not just because she wanted us to match. Face it, I'm a sucker for my daughter wanting to match me. Plus, I know the window for that happening is pretty narrow.

No, I was delighted because I believe, sincerely believe, that Halloween costumes are meant to be home-made and not store-bought - in part because I value creativity, and in part because I value being cheap.  So, for the first three years of her life I made her Halloween costumes. In retrospect, that may just have been overcompensation for being a full-time working mom. Whatever.

Then, when she was four, she decided to be a princess, no wait a ballerina, no wait a fairy, no wait all of them, and I didn't have a clue how to make that costume. When my sister-in-law sent a picture from a catalog that met all those requirements, I considered it a miracle, and bought it, along with some pale pink tights, and some sparkly fairy shoes, and the pink turtleneck and pink sweatshirt to wear under so she wouldn't die from exposure during Trick or Treat. What I spent on that year's costume was obscene. In retrospect, it may just have been overcompensation for being a full-time working mom. So sue me.

Sometimes I think sternly that she doesn't need a new costume every year, that as long as it fits, she should wear the same costume from year to year. When I was growing up, that's what we did. But that thought is usually swamped by the awful memories of that awful costume that we had to wear from year to year, an awful, baggy, pink nylon costume that said "Princess" across the chest in sparkly blue lettering, which we wore over our jeans and our winter jackets. It came with a cheap plastic mask of what appeared to be a grimacing woman wearing a tiara. We used to long for a different costume. Anything our friends wore was better. So if my daughter wants to pick out a different costume every year, I find I'm willing to take out my credit card and make that happen. No doubt it's just overcompensation, yadda yadda.

Then this year, out of the blue, she decided it would be fun to make our costumes, and I was delighted. But the funny thing is that it turns out to be at least as expensive to make a costume as to buy it, because it turns out we aren't actually black cats, and we don't have black cat stuff around the house. She had head bands and pipe cleaners, and I had black pants and shirts and shoes. We had to buy a black turtleneck and black sweatshirt for her. They don't even sell them for girls, so we had to buy them in the boys department, which caused a certain amount of drama, which was appeased in part by buying her black boots. And we needed black mittens. And black fleece for the tails and ears. And pink fleece for the insides of the ears. And stuffing for the tails. And face paint.

So we spent a small fortune, and we hot-glued ourselves some tails and ears, and we donned our black clothes, and we painted each other's faces. She was inordinately proud of our fairly crude results. People seemed to able to tell what we were supposed to be. She was happy. I was happy. I know the window for the two of us being happy about the same thing is fairly narrow, and I'm enjoying it while I can. And for a whole glorious day, I can feel like a good mom.

My Little Fashion Genius - Revisted

In May, I wrote in my blog about the day my daughter decided that she despaired of my wardrobe, and took me shopping. She was actually quite helpful to me, and I thought I was doing pretty well. For example, earlier today, before I changed into the navy blue sweats and white T-shirt that I'm wearing now, I was wearing a pink T-shirt with my khakis.

Apparently she doesn't agree with my positive self-assessment.

The other day she emerged from her room dressed like this. Note the boring monochromatic color scheme - the boring black pants and the boring white collared shirt. (She didn't have any shoes as boring as mine, so you'll have to forgive her for improvising there.) She claimed to be dressed like me.

She thought she was pretty funny. For the record, I think she looks pretty good.

Internet Porn for Children

My daughter was introduced to Internet porn the other day. It wasn't a voluntary thing - on her part or mine. I guess that's probably obvious. Anyway - suddenly there it was, and I had to figure out how to talk to her about it.

But first let me just say this -- it's not fair!!!

I wasn't being a bad parent on that particular day. My daughter and I were snuggled together on the sofa, using the laptop to find pictures of Scooby Doo and the Gang for a little project she was working on. The timer rang on the oven, so I left her for a moment to take some home-baked muffins out of the oven. I'm not making that up -- home-baked muffins, from scratch. I swear I was being a good mom that day!

But the problem is that sometimes people like to dress up as Scooby Doo and the Gang. Only they neglect to put on underwear. And they have to bend over for some reason. And then they get their pictures taken.  And then they post them on the Internet.

Sigh.

So, my daughter was looking at pictures of Scooby and the Gang when she saw some pictures of naked people, and she was pretty shocked. I knew something was wrong when I went back into the living room and found her sitting completely still, not moving at all.

So, here's a question - how do you talk with an 8-year-old about porn? (Just for a frame of reference - she doesn't know about sex yet, and she thinks kissing is gross.)

The answer is that there are lots of things to say to an 8-year-old about porn.  We talked for a long, long time.

At first she didn't want to say much, and just seemed to want a lot of reassurance.  So I talked in a very matter-of-fact, very calm way.

Then after a while, she wanted to make some sense out of what she saw. We had to start somewhere that she understands, so we talked about bad guys. One way to be a bad guy is to take naked pictures of people and post them on the Internet. Another is to let somebody take naked pictures of you.

But it's more complex than that, because, even though it seems bad to her, people are actually allowed to do those things. And she's old enough to understand some level of complexity. So we talked about how, weird as it might seem to her, naked pictures are actually legal, as long as it's grownups in the pictures, and grownups taking the pictures, and never, ever kids. And as long as everyone knows it's happening, and has agreed to it.

That led to questions about whether there should be a law against taking naked pictures and posting them on the Internet. Turns out 8 isn't too young to start thinking about freedom of speech, and starting to understand both sides of that issue.

And it led off on the tangent of understanding that's why you can't use a cell phone in the locker rooms at the Y. Because maybe somebody isn't talking on the phone, but is actually taking secret naked pictures of people.

Now she gets why young kids don't get to use the Internet by themselves, for exactly this reason - that sometimes they might accidentally see something on the Internet that wasn't meant for kids. She immediately vowed never, ever to use the Internet without her dad or me right there, because this really freaked her out. But that issue is more complex, and the situation has changed for us now, because she was clearly able to tell when she'd come upon something she wasn't supposed to see, and she had done the right thing, which is to do nothing until I came back and helped her. So we talked about what a good kid she is, and what good judgement she used, and how we're likely to trust her to do more alone on the Internet now that we know how responsible she is.

Much as I might have hoped we could have avoided more embarrassing territory, we really couldn't, because much as the experience shocked her, and freaked her out, she also found the pictures kind of ... interesting. She was uncomfortable admitting it, but she kind of wanted some reassurance and understanding of that too.

So I explained that pictures of naked people are pretty common on the Internet, because sometimes people enjoy looking at them. I wasn't ready to talk with her about all the fun and exciting aspects of nudity, and I really don't think she's ready to hear about them, but we did talk about curiosity, and how it's perfectly natural to have some. She can look in the mirror to see what a naked girl looks like, but she doesn't ever have an opportunity to see naked boys, and she's curious. It's not like I had a great answer for her. It's natural to be curious, but you're supposed to wait until you're an adult to indulge that curiosity by looking at naked pictures of people on the Internet. Bummer to be a kid.

And then we even talked about some of the words, so that if she wants to talk about it again sometime, she'll have the vocabulary.

It was a long talk. Afterwards it felt like somebody ought to swoop in and give me a medal, or at least a drink, but of course nobody did. Her little art project got derailed, which was too bad, but it turned out to be a pretty good day anyway. I can't help but believe that we added some points in the trust column that day, with the difficult but honest conversation, although the topic hasn't come up again.

Thank God.

Not the Best Pets

A little girl once went home from a birthday party with a goldfish in a bag. She had won it as a prize. Since then, this has been a fear lurking in the back of my mind, that somebody would thrust an undesirable pet on my daughter, and I would be stuck with it.

And then it happened.

I picked up my daughter from camp the other day, and she was so excited. Guess what was in her water bottle? It was lake clams. The campers had hiked to a lake, and an older girl had persuaded my daughter that she should scoop up some clams and take them home as pets.

The older girl knew a little bit about clams as pets. She knew they ate algae. She knew my daughter needed to keep them in water. She knew they should have stones and sand in the bowl. So here is what surprises me - that, having apparently had experience with clams as pets, she recommended them.

Here's the thing about my daughter's clams - we never knew if they were alive or dead. From the beginning of our pet experience to the end, it was never clear. It was never even clear how many clams there were, since the water was a little murky, and they may have been stuck together, and one of them may have been a stone.

Given that we weren't even very good at distinguishing clams from stones, we were certainly never going to be able to tell them apart. This was somewhat disappointing for a little girl who had hoped to name her new pet(s).

So, to be nice, let's just call them, collectively, Clammy.

Here's another thing about Clammy. They are very smelly. It may have been the algae, or it may have been the clams. It wasn't entirely clear what reeked, but it was bad enough that we had to keep them in the basement.

And here's another thing about Clammy. We really had no idea how to keep them alive, if that was even necessary, given that we weren't sure they were ever alive. No idea about water temp, or whether we needed to leave the basement light on for them, or how deep the water should be, or how rocky/sandy the bottom of their plastic bowl needed to be, or whether the chemicals in our water would be a problem, or whether they were upside-down or right-side-up, and if that mattered.

But I will say this in Clammy's favor. It took very little time for my daughter to tire of this pet. The whole down in the basement, smelly, not doing anything to indicate being alive thing meant that, when she wasn't looking, we were able to release Clammy back to the wild. And when she noticed, my daughter didn't really mind.

And so the lesson about how wild animals need to stay in the wild, that they aren't meant to be pets, was actually learned. And there weren't even tears.

Not sure if it was a happy ending, what with not knowing whether Clammy lived through it. But it might have been.

I Couldn't Resist

I was shopping at WalMart with my daughter this morning. She's outgrown her old flip flops, and wanted a new pair. She noticed some pink ones that were available in both kid sizes and grownup sizes. She was thrilled.

"Mommy," she said. "We could have matching flip flops. That would be the coolest thing in the world!"

I hate flip flops.

So, check out my new pink flip flops. My daughter has a pair that matches. She thinks that's the coolest thing in the world. She's eight. I know she won't feel that way for much longer. How could I resist?

My Little Fashion Genius

I've never claimed to have any fashion sense. As summer approaches, I typically stock up on white T-shirts, black T-shirts, and navy blue T-shirts. As winter approaches, I typically stock up on white turtlenecks, black turtlenecks, and navy blue turtlenecks. I'll typically pair my shirts with jeans, or with black pants or navy pants, or sometimes with khakis for a change of pace.

The other day my 8-year-old took me in hand. I was purging my closet of clothes that I no longer wear. She sat on my bed, a pint-sized autocrat, rolling her eyes and making snide comments. "Did you wear that to work on a farm, Mommy?" Or, "I guess you could keep that, if you promise you'll only wear it to paint the house."

Finally, in complete disgust, she demanded to take me shopping, and she demanded that I promise to try on and buy whatever she said. I am bigger than she is, and I control the credit cards, and she is in second grade and still happily wears outfits with clashing patterns, so I didn't agree to everything. But it was Mother's Day, and it sounded like fun, so I agreed to put myself in her hands, and we went shopping.

Normally, she doesn't have the world's longest attention span. And normally she's not a big fan of shopping unless it's for her. But not that day. We shopped for an hour, stopped for lunch, and then went back to the store and put in another hour. Without exaggeration, she had me try on 50 things.

I vetoed the shirts with enormous cabbage rose patterns and flappy things on the sleeves that looked like butterfly wings, and I vetoed everything in a shade I call "pinky tan," which I hate. But I bought nine new things that day. There was a red shirt, a couple of pink ones, two aqua things, a purple, and a yellow, and some more stuff. There were two things I might have picked out on my own, but most of them were in styles I wouldn't have even thought to try on.

So the day was an unmitigated success, and my daughter was an unmitigated success, but now she is flush with her newfound power. She wants another day with me, because she'd still like to deal with my pants and shoes, and she's disappointed that I didn't buy a dress. I can't decide if my future looks good, now that I have a personal shopper of my very own, or if I should be terrified.

Dealing with Screen Time

Our daughter is eight. Given that my husband and I are avid readers, we had always just assumed that she would be too. We had expected it would have happened by now, but it hadn't.

She watches TV more than she should. That's our fault, we know. We're sorry. And she plays video games, which didn't exist when I was a kid, unless you count Pong. I feel strongly about raising a computer-proficient daughter, so I won't apoligize for that.

Part of the problem is our DVR. There is never a time when "there's nothing on," because there's always something good, pre-recorded and available. It makes screening TV shows easy. We control what's recorded, and we pick good quality, age-appropriate fare. So that's good. But the bad thing is that there's never a time when what's on is just too awful to watch, which was much more common when we were young.

We'd tried imposing a screen-time quota, but we got a lot of whining and negotiating, and found ourselves doing much more activities directing on the weekends than we really wanted to do. "There's nothing to dooooooooo!"

We've tried something lately, though, that's been working like a champ so far. We made a deal. For every hour of weekend screen time, there has to be a half hour of reading.

This is a lot more reading than she'd been doing. On weeknights, she's required to read for 15 minutes, as homework. But there's never been a requirement for weekend reading, and a fair number of weekends passed without any reading at all. We hate making a power struggle out of reading, because it just seems too important in the long run for her to like it.

We've noticed three good things that have come from this new deal. The first one was not unexpected. She's doing a lot more reading, anywhere from one to four hours on a weekend. At a minimum she's doing half an hour each day. But half an hour is long enough to actually get caught up in a story, so it's not unusual for her to keep reading once she gets started.

Second, she's doing other things. When she gets done with her hour of screen time, sometimes she doesn't want to launch right into her reading time. As she procrastinates, she's been finding other things to do, imaginative things, without complaining. I'm not sure why that is. It could be she figures that if she asks for something to do, I'll just tell her to do her reading.

And third, she's spending a lot less time in front of a screen. She's been playing with her dolls, and pulling out some craft stuff, and playing more make-believe. It's not like she hasn't had upwards of nine billion toys cluttering up our house all along, but now she's actually playing with them. And, of course, she's reading. And suddenly she's reading longer, harder books than she had been, probably because she actually has enough time to get into them now.

Of course, kids change quickly, so we don't really know how long this particular strategy will work. But it's working great now, so it seemed worth mentioning.

I Am An Embarrassment to My Daughter (Part 1 of Thousands)

My daughter had to take a reading comprehension test at school.  She had read the book three times.  My husband and I had quizzed her on the content, and she had it down cold.  She needed to let her teacher know when she was ready to take the test, go to the library to use the computer, and take it. 

Days passed.  She didn't take the test.  She was worried she wouldn't do well.  She was worried she wouldn't remember how to log in.  She was worried that she wouldn't know what was expected of her, or how to do it.  She was worried, and the worry kept her from doing what she needed to do.

Luckily, I'm able to mortify her, already.  (She's only seven.  I thought I'd have more time.)

I gave her one more chance.  I told her that if she didn't take the test the next day, I was going to email her teacher, and ask her teacher to make sure that she got her butt down to the library to take the test.

"But you wouldn't really use the word 'butt' if you wrote to my teacher, would you?" she asked, absolutely aghast.

"Oh yes I would," I replied.

And so she took the test, finally, to avoid the horror of my using the word 'butt' with her teacher. 

(She passed.)

Let's Make a Movie!

Summer's over.  But it was a great summer.  Before the end of the school year my daughter rattled off a whole list of things she thought would be fun to do over the summer, and I jotted them down.  Whenever we needed a good idea for a project during the summer, we went back to what turned out to be a kind of summer bucket list. 

We made tie-dyed T-shirts, a pinata, cream-filled cupcakes and jam.  She had a lemonade stand.  We went camping and we went to the beach.  And, we made a movie.

This is the project that had me the most daunted originally - how to make a movie with a seven-year-old.  What's more, it couldn't be just any story - she wanted to do a Scooby-Doo movie.  Those stories tend to be long.  They include a van, a talking dog, and usually a supernatural monster villain who can fly, and who has glowing eyes.  And then luckily, one day my daughter brought home the perfect Scooby-Doo book from the library.  It was an easy-reader book, with only five scenes and four sets.  The villain was a guy who dressed up as a ghost.  It was totally doable.  I felt like a producer who'd found the perfect property.  We were in business.

So, one Saturday we had two dozen people over.  I had prepared the scripts for each scene ahead of time.  Most of them were short enough to fit on one side of a piece of paper, which was about the right length.  I thought I'd make it simple for the kids by highlighting their character's lines on the script, but the kids didn't really understand what a script was initially, or how to follow one, and thought those lines were crossed out.  So there was a little basic training required.  And I made a big grid of names to help me keep track of who played what part in each scene, or did sound effects or camera, so I could make sure to distribute those roles fairly.

Before lunch, one mom read the story out loud to everyone, while I met individually with kids to find out their preferences, for example who was too shy to have lines, and who wanted to operate the camera.  Then I split the kids into four groups to make the props and scenery.  One set of kids made the sign to hang on the Vinny's Pizza restaurant.  Another group made a treasure map.  Another group made a couple of fake pizzas.  And the last group painted big hunks of paper to magnet to someone's car for The Mystery Machine.

We ordered pizzas for lunch.  But before we ate them, we used them in the first scene that we filmed.  The kids practiced a few times, then we filmed it twice, each time with a different kid operating the camera.  The first time we ran the scene and I said "Action," absolutely nothing happened.  Turns out seven-year-olds don't know what that means.  They didn't know not to wander into scenes being filmed when they're not in it.  They didn't know not to walk in front of the camera, or to keep the camera turned on the actors.  But as we figured out what the kids didn't know, we explained it, and the kids did just great.

I had the kids switch off parts between scenes, counting on the costumes to identify the characters.   Most of the scenes were filmed at our house - the kitchen scene in the kitchen, the restaurant scene in our dining room, and the scene in front of the restaurant in front of our house.  Two scenes took place on a spooky road.  So my daughter and I scouted locations earlier in the week, and found an old alley just a block away where we filmed them.

Enough kids like Scooby Doo that we did all right with costumes.  Two girls had Daphne costumes from Halloween.  One dad had been Shaggy, so we used his costume, and one mom had been Velma.  For Freddy, someone brought a blue and white striped polo shirt, and we found a red scarf.  Scooby was tricky.  One little sister had a Scooby costume, but started crying when someone else put it on, and had to be taken home.  Her mom would have left the costume, except that another little girl tugged on my sleeve and told me she had a Scooby costume along.  Turns out it was just a brown shirt and brown pants.  But we did have a T-shirt here that had Scooby's face on it, so we used that as the Scooby costume in some of the scenes.

It took us four hours to make the props and scenery, and to film the five scenes, which is an hour less than I had planned for, and an hour more than the kids really had patience for.  But they stuck it out, did a good job, and had a really great time.  I've finished editing it now, and here are the first couple of scenes.

The Birds, But Not the Bees... Yet

It seems like it's when I'm on long drives with my daughter that she asks the tough questions.  I try to give kind of low-key, but also honest and factual, but also age-appropriate answers, because I'm hoping to instill trust.  I'm hoping that she'll always feel like she can come to me with her questions.  The problem is that she does.  And some of them are tough ones.

So tonight, the conversation started with her asking me how old a girl has to be to have a baby.  She guessed 18.  Earlier this summer we'd had our first rudimentary conversation about menstruation.  So I was able to reference that conversation, and to remind her that when that starts, that's how you know your body is ready to be able to make a baby.  But then, in a rudimentary, age-appropriate way of suggesting she not get knocked up as a teenager, I told her that, even though her body will be ready in her teens, most girls wait until they're in their twenties to have babies.

But that raised the question of how they wait.  That one's kind of a stumper, when you're talking to a seven-year-old.  So I said, "Well, first they have to fall in love with someone.  You have to have a daddy and a mommy both, to make a baby."

So then she asked, "Is that because you have to mix the two together somehow?"  And I said yes, dying quietly inside, waiting for the next question, the big one.

And then, in a wonderful, unexpected, miraculous reprieve, my daughter quickly jumped in and said, "Don't tell me about that, though.  I don't want to know."

"No problem," I told her.

Whew.

My Daughter is Gifted

My daughter competed in a talent show at day camp.  She played Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on a kazoo, and sweetly, naively, hoped she would win.  Thankfully the camp counselors gave little plastic gold medals to all the participants, and so my daughter, unclear on who actually won, was happy.  She's not a talented little girl, at least in the traditional sense.

But she does have more obscure talents.  The girl can talk.  And talk.  And talk.  When she went for a haircut, and chattered on and on through the entire appointment, the hairstylist finally said to her, "I think you woke up with a whole lot of words in your body today."  Even when we shush her in exasperation when we're trying to talk on the phone, for example, or sleep, she can talk and talk about how quiet she is being.  We think talking may be her super power.

And she can contain her puke.  When she got car sick in the rental car on the second day of our vacation, we discovered this talent.  We truly appreciated it.  It was a summer vacation in a hot climate.  She held her puke in her mouth until I was able to get a spare jacket arranged in her lap for her to spew into.  (Having a spare jacket along at all times is actually my super power.)

It may be a reach to say that she is gifted.  But lots of times parents of small children will extrapolate from their children's behavior to future success in some high-gain career.  Shrewd negotiating to get their own way over their parents' objections means children are destined to be lawyers.  Bossing around their little friends means children are destined to be president.  By this reasoning, my child is destined to be a lawyer and the president.  Funny how watching children dance around the house naked, refusing to get dressed, rarely makes parents speculate that their children will grow up to be strippers.  But if it did, our daughter would definitely do that too.  She is clearly destined to be a smooth-talking, puke-holding, exotic dancing president, if she doesn't first become a ballerina, cowgirl, scientist, or professional kazoo player.

Lemonade Stand

Yesterday my daughter and her friend had their first lemonade stand. I'd like to give a shout-out to the people who stopped and bought some lemonade. The kids were absolutely thrilled.

A couple of years ago my friend Kathy informed me that I'm obligated to stop at every lemonade stand I see, now that I'm a parent. I don't think I had ever stopped at one before. Really, who wants an overfilled, lidless plastic cup of tepid Kool-Aid? But, of course she was right.

So yesterday, on my way home from the grocery store in a car filled with melting frozen lemonade, I passed a little lemonade stand a block from my house. And I realized I had to stop, even though I was about to have more lemonade in my house than I knew what to do with. So, I backed up to the stand and bought a cup. The little girl was so thrilled that she actually jumped up and down, shrieking to her little brother, "I sold one! I sold one!" It was kind of wonderful to experience that much joy, and for only twenty-five cents.

So, I went home and helped my daughter and her friend set up their stand, and it was the same thing. It was a hot day, and there wasn't much traffic. In the two hours they sat there, they had only nine customers, and my husband was two of them. But they were thrilled with every sale they made, ecstatic every time a car slowed down. So, thanks to all you people who get it, and who stopped and made my little girl's day.

Two Schedules

Last night my husband and I went out to dinner, and hired a babysitter to stay with our daughter. This was a new babysitter, so I made out a little schedule for the evening so she would know how we do things. It was simple enough:

Eat dinner
Play
Read
Brush teeth and put on pajamas
Bedtime

What I didn't know is that my daughter also anticipated the need for an evening schedule, and made one of her own. When I gave my list to the babysitter, my daughter popped into the room to give the babysitter her list too. Its focus is delightfully different:

Jump rope
Hide and seke
Eat Smartys
Draw picshrs
Play camping
Eat dinner
Play on the cumputer
Wach TV

Looks like I'd missed a few crucial things.

Life's A Beach

We're on vacation in Los Angeles. We've made an itinerary. Going to the beach is on there for the second day. But it's funny how the ocean draws you. We're staying in a hotel in Santa Monica, a few blocks from the beach, and a few blocks from the Third Street Promenade, a trendy shopping and restaurant district where we used to hang out when we were dating. That's where we planned to meander the first afternoon, after we'd checked in. But we wound up walking right past, and on down to the water.

Our daughter immediately shed her shoes and went wading in, which was fine, as long as she didn't get her clothes wet. Then she fell, trying to outrun a wave to shore, and got her bottom wet, which was fine, as long as she didn't get any wetter. Then she sat down in the sand to dig, and got swamped by a wave. She was soaked, head to foot. Then she rolled around in the sand, so she was covered with sand too. And really, what did we expect? And really, what more could we have hoped for? What a great way to spend a beautiful afternoon.