Category Archives: Parenting

Sweet Pickles

Posted on March 13, 2012 | 5 comments

A lot of my readers appear to be just about my age.  So, at least one of you read my title and thought “Oh, wow!  I loved those books!!!”

Sweet Pickles books were distributed starting in 1977 and there was one for every letter of the alphabet.  Throughout my life I have been both a slob and a neatnik.  But one thing remained the same.  I keep my Sweet Pickles books in alphabetical order.

Okay, two things remained the same.  I am also a moody so and so.  One moment I am elated, the very next in the pit of despair.

My very favorite Sweet Pickle book is about Moody Moose.  Moody Moose is happy one moment, sad the next ,and it troubles the other folks in her town. So much so that Zebra throws Moose a party and gives her a set of buttons.  One for sweet and one for sour, so that everyone can tell from a distance what kind of a mood Moose is in depending upon which button she is wearing.

Lucy takes after her mama.  And Moose.  But I don’t think she needs buttons.  It is fairly apparent.

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What a difference a few minutes can make...

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90 minutes

Posted on March 10, 2012 | 10 comments

90 minutes.  One and one half of an hour.  The average length of a feature film.  Enough time to drive about 80 miles away from your house if you live near a highway.  I could read more than half of  a typical junky novel in that time.  Or I could go get my nails done.

And this morning I did.

All alone.

I had planned to do this.  I had three ounces of milk pumped in the fridge.  Twice as much as necessary if you consider the one ounce per hour rule.

I stayed in bed with Lucy until 9:30.  She nursed and fell back asleep several times in the extra two and a half hours we lolled about in the sack.  Eventually I kissed MQD on the cheek and said something along the lines of needing to just rip the band-aid off.   Put her in the stroller and take a walk if she is cranky.  You know how to warm a bottle, right?  She might not even be hungry.  Unless you are going to the emergency room, try not to call me.  

And then he didn’t.

I sat down across from the man who does my nails and he said “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” I said.  And I waited.  For him to say “So, where’s your baby?” or “Anything new?” Surely MQD would call and say “She’s crying terribly, come home” and I’d have to say “Oh, she’s fine, I’ll be home as soon as I can…”

The man said nothing.  My phone did not ring.

“Relax your hand,” he said, shaking my fingers.  I tried.  Moments later “Relax your hand,” he said.  I am TRYING.  Can’t you see I am DYING inside because my six year old barely waved goodbye from across the street as I backed down the driveway and my infant, my less than two month old infant, is at home with my husband and they are NOT calling.   NOBODY needs me.

In silence, he did my nails.  I read my book.  “You want to pick a color?  Or you want French?”  I looked up.  “What? Oh.  French, please.”  He gestured to the other chair, next to the airbrush machine. I stood to switch chairs, leaving my wallet, my book, my sweater, but grabbing my phone.  Surely MQD would call.

The minutes ticked by painfully.  “You like?  All done,” he said.  I am sure that I paid him.  I am sure that I walked to my car, but I don’t recall speaking to anyone.   I called home immediately.  No answer.  I hung up and called again.  No answer.  He called right back.  It was quiet at first.  “Do you want me to run to the grocery store or should I just come home?”

Crying in the car at the longest stop light ever.

“We’re okay,” he said.  And then I heard her.  Not crying, really, just grumbling a  bit.

“I’m coming home.”  It takes nine minutes to get home from that shopping center.  I got home in seven. My eyes wet with tears I said “Mommy’s home, baby girl, I missed you…” and we rocked in the chair in the living room as she rooted around in search of my breast.

“How was it?” MQD asked.

“It was fucking awful.  I know I need to go.  But it was fucking terrible.”

 

Fortunately for me, I had my nails done, not my make up.  And crying doesn’t ruin your fingernails.

 

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What’s the opposite of Desperate? Grateful?

Posted on March 6, 2012 | 5 comments

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There’s a Barbie bike
No beer cans or ash trays.
It is official.

Coffee in one hand
I’m doing the baby sway
In Sweats and slippers.

Smile on my face
The bus driver waves at me.
I can’t deny it.

Dishwasher humming
Today Show in the background
I’m not pretending.

I am all grown up.
Welcome to suburbia.
I can’t turn back now.
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The Shittiest Five Seconds

Posted on March 5, 2012 | 7 comments

At first glance you’d think it was obvious. What is the shittiest five seconds of my day? Because the exact same thing happens every single day.

I was a lifeguard for many, many years. After that I still sat at the pool more hours than a girl working two jobs should be able to squeeze out of a summer. You’d think I’d wise up eventually, get out of the sun. But instead I moved to the beach. Needless to say my skin has suffered. I was careful about putting sunscreen on my face, around my eyes, on my chest. All the places I didn’t want to see freckles become age spots.

Somehow I managed to overlook my arms completely.

If you ever want to see your skin look old and battered, hold it up against a newborn baby.

And now, some twenty years after my first job as a lifeguard the sunspots on my arms give me pause. Daily. They don’t remind me to put on sunscreen. Not at all.

They make me stop and think. Oh man. I have shit on my arm.

And every single day I try to wipe them off. This might seem absurd if it were not that I do get shit on my hand, on my leg (as I sit on the floor, Lucy between my legs wiggling through a diaper change) every day.

I’d planned on writing today about the perspective that is gained by having children. I knew that I’d view all kinds of things differently through the lens of motherhood. But I had not imagined that I’d see the signs of aging on my arms and think “well at least it isn’t poop!” and smile. And yet that’s exactly  how it plays out.

But today that was not the shittiest  five seconds of my day.  Today there were five entire seconds that were worse than thinking I was aging too quickly OR that I had shit on my arm.

Lucy slept through our trip to the grocery store.  She blinked for a moment as I pushed the cart in to the cart wrangling area in the parking lot.  I managed to carry all the grocery bags back to my trunk in one trip.  It was bitter cold when I got home.  And I startled  myself by setting off the house alarm when I got back.  I had forgotten that I had set it.  I ran back out to the car to get the groceries and Lucy, it was so very cold out.  And windy.

I grabbed a few grocery bags in one arm and looked in to the back seat.  Her car seat wasn’t there.  I ran back inside.  In to the kitchen.  Not there.  In to the living room, not there.  What had been small tears when I was at my car had become big, Lifetime movie tears in a matter of seconds, “Luuuucyyyy!!!!” I cried out.  Fisher barked.  And I ran back towards the door to close it, the last thing I needed was for Fish to take off running.

All I could see in my mind  was her sweet face, blinking in wide eyed amazement at the wind in the parking lot, in her car seat, in the grocery store parking lot.

Whenever MQD or Emily are missing I always check the bathrooms. Same goes for Lucy, I guess.

As I closed the door to the driveway I laughed…. there she was, sound asleep.  In her seat.  Next to the litter box.  Right where I put her when the alarm started beeping.  Which was probably an awful lot worse than had I actually left her in the parking lot for twenty minutes.

As much as  I wanted to pull her out of her seat and wrap her little arms around my neck, squeeze her and tell her that I love her with everything I am…. I put away the groceries, cleaned all three bathrooms and folded two loads of laundry before she woke up.   Oh, and emptied the litter box.  Since my sweet girl was gonna nap in the guest bath room.

And today…. THAT was the shittiest five seconds of my day.  I am fairly certain it aged me more than the sun ever did.

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I can hardly speak…

Posted on March 1, 2012 | 12 comments

“Heaven, I’m in heaven...”  Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Bing Crosby, hell even Mel Torme… I’m not picky.  One of the most beautiful songs ever recorded is Irving Berlin’s “Cheek to Cheek.”

And every night I think I might crack, I might not make it.  Swaying back and forth in the darkness of our bedroom there is a moment when I can hear Lucy exhale and her head falls against my shoulder.  I sway, I bounce a few extra moments to make sure it is really gonna stick and I lower my head,  my cheek rests against hers… and every night, I am in heaven once again.  As we dance, slowly, back and forth cheek to cheek.

Motherhood doesn’t turn  you in to a saint.  You still have the moments that you think what the shit was I thinking, this is a thankless job.  I have that moment nightly when I think how long will this last?  The screaming every night… and then my cheek rests against hers and I know we will make it through at least one more day.

As I paced with Lucy the other night, my eye on the clock because she has just about exactly an hour in her, I started to giggle.  I came out of the bedroom to tell MQD that as long as this hour may seem now, the two, maybe three hours we will spend saying “Get back in your bed, Lucy” when she is four years old, they will seem exponentially longer.

You never realize how few lullabies you really know until you have a baby.  I had  also never given any thought to how incredibly sad the lullabies I did know are.  (Please don’t take my sunshine away, are you fucking kidding me?) When Emily was a baby we rocked and I sang.  That poor kid might have thought her name was Tennessee Jed.  Eventually I looked up lyrics to some lullabies, tried them out, but none of them resonated with me.

Eventually I settled on one song, a long one with lots of rambly lyrics, R.E.M.’s “You are the Everything.” I could get at least to the second verse before I got weepy, no small feat for the new mother.  And now I find myself settling on this song yet again.

“She is so young and old, I look at her and I see the beauty of the light of music…”

As I swayed and I sang I remembered when I first heard that song.  It was on the Green album, 1988.  I had it on tape.  It was the summer I discovered the bikini and “laying out” and walkmans and baby oil.  I thought I was so old.  That song used to smell like fresh cut grass and lemonade and composition books  (because even at 12 I had developed that teenage affectation for carrying around a notebook to record my most scintillating thoughts) and hardback copies of Stephen King’s books swiped from my parent’s bookcases.

Now that song still smells like babies.  “You are here with me, You have been here and you are everything…” I know both of my girls were with me then, too, in my back yard, trying to look casual as I watched the side of our fence, hoping that someone might walk by.   I hadn’t met them.  In truth, I had not even really begun to imagine them.   But they were there.  They have always been there.  They have always been everything to me.

And now they are here.  My girls.  I waited a long time for this.  And even the screaming, the late night crying, I won’t wish it away.  Close my eyes, sing 25 year old  R.E.M. tunes and try and smell the cut grass?  Sure.

But I am soaking it up.  Like the sunshine in my back yard.

I threw my phone on the bed the other night in the middle of Lucy's scream session. I must have pressed a button. According to Siri - this is what she was saying. She is "on and on" that much is right.

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I hate the “P” word. But sometimes it is exactly the right word.

Posted on February 26, 2012 | 8 comments

Just because I am full of Hope and new Habits and dreams and crock pot recipes doesn’t mean I have turned my back on my  demons.

But last night I laid one to rest.

Perhaps other  people’s husbands say just the right thing and it is poetic and full of “sweethearts” and “I love yous” broken up only by tender moments.

But when I need support. True support. I don’t  need coddling. I just need someone to shoot it straight.

“I will not even entertain this conversation” he said.

Always mannerly, even in an argument. He managed to tell me to shut the fuck up in such a way that he eased my fears. I hate that he can do that.  Even while I am simultaneously loving it  – it pisses me off.

When you write about your insides and you don’t seem to edit much out there is an assumption that you put it all out there. Maybe some people do but I don’t. Not out of a desire for privacy or an intent to be misleading. I just can’t write until I’ve figured it out. And then it is an after the fact admission instead of a real time confession. But the writing it all down. It helps me to keep the same fears from cropping up time and again. Once  the demons that I wrestle with in my head  have names they don’t scare me anymore.

Last night in the middle of an argument (the details of which are both private and irrelevant as I have a knack for deviating from the original discussion) I realized I wasn’t making sense. I was pushing MQD away out of fear. So I summoned the courage to be brave for just one minute.

Deep breath and spill it. If something happened to me and Mike, to our marriage, I’d lose everything. He would get Lucy half the time. And Emily, too, if I did right by her. And I’d be lost. Without a home, a job or my children.

As always once I said it out loud it lost a lot of its power. But it was what he said that assuaged it altogether.

He could have asked me what my problem was or been hurt that I’d be suggesting now of all times that our marriage would fail. Instead he just said he refused to entertain this conversation.

“Ok.” And I could feel the weight lift. “I guess it is just as much a waste of time as making a plan for if aliens land in the backyard.”  I smiled.

And even though I’d been yelling at him and being all kinds of hysterical for the last half an hour he smiled too. “No, that would actually be more worthwhile.”

What reason do I have for being afraid? Are there problems in my new marriage I haven’t addressed? No. None.

It’s just me. And February. My divorce from Emily’s dad was final in a February. I saw the date pass in the calendar  recently and I thought about the nail in our coffin. And for a moment I forgot the truth and I began to think that it was all me. And my love for Emily. That I couldn’t be a wife and a mother and our divide began when Em was born. That it was all me that had failed. And the Insecurity Dragon (the only demon with a name that I fear I will never slay) reared its head and went to work on my heart.

Several days later and I am in my kitchen crying. Preparing my heart for the day when my marriage crumbles again because I pour my heart in to being a mother and I don’t know how to be a wife at all.

Only this time I do know how. I stopped yelling. And I stopped crying. And I said “I am afraid”  and I asked for help. That is four impossibly hard things if you’re keeping track.

He stood and took the baby from my arms and jiggled her on one shoulder. With his other arm wrapped around me, there was stereo crying in his ears.
It’s funny. The things I repeat in my head. The moments in my marriage that become touchstones for when I require strength or faith. I’m adding “I will not entertain this conversation” to the pile with what MQD said the day I went in to labor.

Early in the day not long after he came home from work I was pacing in the kitchen when it hit me. Today would be the day I’d realize a dream.  My unmedicated birth.   And then I started to question if I’d have the strength, no the courage, to follow through. He must have seen the fear start to take root and he stopped  me. “You’re a bad ass Kelly. You just can’t be too much of a pussy today to be a bad ass. “

I love that he said “today.”  Because  you can’t be expected to be a bad ass everyday. And sometimes all it takes to be a bad ass is to just not act like such a pussy.

I’m working on it.  Being brave is not so impossibly hard.

In December of 2008 I thought MQD was a kid and I was all Grown Up. I couldn't have been more wrong.



For MQD – Because one day I will be Grown Up.  And it will knock your socks off.  Thank you for being so patient.  I love you.  More today than I have in all our days.  At least until the aliens land.  xo

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Thing 1 and Thing 2

Posted on February 25, 2012 | 7 comments

They say (and in this instance the “they” I speak of is actually my mother) that no two kids have the same parent. I was thinking about just how true that statement is yesterday afternoon while I was in the shower.

Lucy was on the floor, right outside the shower. The sound of the shower generally has the same calming effect as the vacuum (and that kid loves a Dyson almost as much as her mama.) I had just put conditioner in my hair when her wiggly sounds went from cheery to filled with rage. Emily’s mother would have leapt from the shower, conditioner still in her hair, soap in her eyes, one armpit shaved and tears in her own eyes to determine what was ailing her sweet baby.

Lucy’s mother poked her head out the curtain and started down the path of insane nonsense singing “Luuucccyyyyy….. Can you not see I am in the shower???!!! I realiiiize this statement has no poooowerrrrr….. you seem not to give a shit, if i have shaved but one armpit!” and so on. I’ll spare you. She is only a fan of my songs about half the time, there is no reason I should subject anyone but family to these tunes. (Now would be a good time to mention that I actually had a Voice teacher in college fire me. Suggest that perhaps my singing training would be over that semester, I had come to the end of the line.  I was hopeless.)

All my songs bring to the table is my witty and charming lyrics. This I come by genetically. My own mother’s top hits I can still recall. A song penned to horrify my brother “Brassierre!!! Let me whisper in your ear, about my favorite brassiere….”

Not all songs were intended to embarrass us. Occasionally they were delightful, as close as we got to positively sinful. A song popular around Thanksgiving, to be sung at full voice to the dogs. A song perhaps my mother regretted the moment it came from her mouth as it was quickly adopted as an all time favorite. I share with you now, my mother’s greatest hit “Poultry.”

“Poultry gives you gaaaas! You blow it out your…” We rarely even got to the “ass” part as the giggles were convulsive by then.

I digress. Kids. They all have different parents, even in the same family. I was more fearful with Em in the beginning. More doting. Lucy gets a better mother, in some respects. I know what I am doing. But does she get the shaft because I don’t leap to her aid in a nanoseccond? I don’t think so.

It was the first time that we were all home alone without Dad. Just me and Em and Lucy Goose. I was making Em a sandwich. I had put Lucy down for the first time all day. And she started to cry. “Hang tight, little mama, your sister needs to eat, too.” In a family of more than one child sometimes we have to wait out turn. Emily was important, too.

Lightbulb.

So is Mom. I never would have let Em cry for twenty seconds while I finished a shower. But somehow the realization that sometimes Lucy will need to wait a moment so I can care for her sister led me to the understanding that it isn’t wrong to let Lucy wait one moment so I can care for myself. If Emily’s needs are valid, aren’t mine?

It took less than sixty seconds to get a cup of coffee and a glass of water.

As a mother it is unspeakably painful for me to hear my children crying. 60 seconds. I can take it that long and then I crumble and run for them, arms open. But did you know you can eat a hardboiled egg, finish a shower, get fully dressed and brush your hair, make your bed, pee, run a pile of crap up the stairs and put it in the room where it belongs if not actually put it away… you can do any one of those things in only 60 seconds. And when you return, arms wide open, you are forgiven immediately. For taking 60 seconds.

Maybe she forgives me only because the singing stops when I return. You think the one about shaving my armpits is awful, you should hear the one about peeing all alone. Suffice it to say Eponine’s “On my own” from Les Mis was my inspiration.

For the record this message was reviewed and approved by Thing 2. I realize she looks like she is watching a horror show but that is a face of approval.

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Nuts and Bolts

Posted on February 24, 2012 | 3 comments

I hesitated to devote an entire post to my plans to get my ass in shape… only because “getting fit” is such a cliche goal of the post-partum woman. And it goes against everything I have previously said about loving myself as I am, accepting my “tiger stripes” and so on.

But it’s really not all about the outside. Although that is a delicious benefit of getting your ass up and moving. It’s just as much about the way my head works.

The overwhelming sense of awe I had for my body after Lucy was born stayed with me for weeks. And I can feel it fading. And I want it back. I can do impossibly difficult things. Or at least things that it turns out are not so impossible at all.

I am sitting at the precipice of a new Life.

Life is made up of the smaller moments, the moments in between. There is where you find the Joy, the Beauty. The nuts and bolts of Living, the thing that holds it all together, it is Habit. It is Routine.

I started thinking. I have an opportunity to develop a new routine, new habits that add up to this new Life that are for me. I have a chance to let the Life I build through Habits and Routine be one that is made up of who I am and what I see as important.

These years will not be made of fancy vacations and nights out. The months of planning for our Wedding and our Baby are behind us. There will be no new homes, new schools to distract us from the day to day. This is the nuts and bolts.

The next “impossibly difficult” thing I plan to do? I am going to make myself a priority.

For many years I have said two things.

The first – I hope I have a chance to be home with my kids when they are small. Here I am. At home with my kids for today. I will do everything I can to figure out a way to stay here. To support MQD in providing for us.

The second – I hope I’m in the best shape of my life by my 40th birthday. That’s four years away. Not one crash diet and a half marathon training program away. Not three times a week Zumba class and a low carb lifestyle. But four years from now.

Four years in which I hope to rebuild my Life. Make new habits, new routines. The irony is not escaping me. That this decision to stay home and take care of my family may actually afford me the time to take care of myself.

I may or may not be “at home” for the next four years. But I am damn sure gonna try to find away to be more present. And in the meantime, I daresay, I will write a fair amount about how to do this…. to take care of me. And my family. Make new Habits. New Routines.

So far I have a small plan. Thirty minutes of exercise. Every single day. More water. Less coffee. Breakfast for dinner once a week. Keep writing. Make the bed. Every day ask Em and MQD if there is anything I can do for them. Run the vacuum before dinner. That’s all I’ve got so far.

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Two and half miles today. I was sweaty. She was hungry. Until she passed out. It was a good day.

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Wellness

Posted on February 24, 2012 | 2 comments

Everyone tells a new mother “Make sure to take time for you!” and  “Take care of yourself, you can’t take care of your family if you are not taking care of you.” And unlike so much of what “everyone” tells you, it’s not bullshit.  So this go round, I am doing the very best I can to do just that.

Yesterday was a damn near perfect day.  I had my second post-partum trip to the chiropractor.  One more and I am cleared for  take off.  It is hard to believe it was only a year ago I drank the Kool-Aid but I am convinced that my chiropractic care is somewhat to credit for my bouncing back so quickly after this labor and delivery.

In the same building, I had the pleasure of participating in my very first activity that starts with the words “Mommy &.”  And believe it or not, after I got past the initial “I can’t fucking believe I am doing this” feeling it was wonderful.

Mommy & Me Yoga.  Check that off the bucket list.  I had this idea that somehow it would be guided rolling around the floor with my youngin’ which I had trouble wrapping my mind around.  Around the why you’d need someone to show you how to do that and how I was going to get through it without peeing in my pants (not from lack of Kegel exercises during and post pregnancy, but from hysterics.)

Turns out Mommy & Me Yoga is regular yoga where your baby can loll around on a blanket (hopefully sleeping) and if they should wake you can pop out a boob in child’s pose or do the Mommy sway in the back of a room and no one will give you the glare.  The glare that says “really, a baby?  A baby?  How dare you bring  a BABY here!?”

There is one more thing a new mother needs to do.  “Get out of your house!” the well meaning advice givers say.  This is easier said than done for some, but I don’t have any trouble getting out.  I was, after all, at work seven days after Lucy was born. But I was out of the house twice this week, socially.  Much harder for me.  I had lunch with an old friend one day this week.  Not a huge accomplishment for some, but slightly more cause for celebration because I initiated this meet up.  And the second time?  With a new friend.

It makes me nervous to say that.  A new friend.  You may recall that I sought acupuncture treatment towards the very end of my pregnancy.  I have since been back twice.  Because I really like the practitioner.  She’s neat.  And cool. In that “I wonder if I am cool enough to kick it with this girl” way.  Can women that have TWO kids even “kick it” at all?

I did the hard thing.  The hard thing that frequently eludes me.  That I had dared myself to do in November in this upcoming year.  I stuck my neck out and tried to make a friend.  Making friends is awkward under normal circumstances, but when you have bullshitted with a gal  a handful of times and at the end you hand them your Visa card it is especially daunting to say “So, I was thinking maybe we could hang out, and maybe I’d not pay you.  Whatcha think?”   But I did it.  And it paid off.

I had the last of my pre-paid sessions yesterday.  And I am certain I will see her when she gets back from her trip to Austin.  Because she likes me, too, guys.  Even though I have TWO kids and am rapidly heading towards having NO job.    And get this.  She has ZERO kids.  Like maybe we could talk about something besides breeding.  Or breastfeeding or how much sleep we got.  There is a place for all that.  A huge place.  I did just finish mentioning that I secretly LOVED Mommy & Me Yoga afterall… but music and tattoos and books and funny stories from your twenties, this is some good shit that deserves some attention, too.

Quite a few of my friends, friends that have known me since Emily was little and before,  have recently sent me an email or a text message along a common theme.  “How are you doing? Really?” And to each of them I have said the same thing, “I’m good, I think.  I feel really good.”

I am typing this in my “running” clothes.  Clothes that will really be walking with a VERY tiny bit of jogging clothes until I have had one  more visit with the chiropractor and am closer to six weeks postpartum.  It isn’t noteworthy that I am writing and wearing pants with a forgiving waist band.  But these clothes are already sweaty.  (Tell me that is not gross? I  wear exercise clothes more than once unless I wear them to a Bikram Yoga class.  I don’t really care if I already smell if I am heading out the door to sweat.)

Day one of a 5K training program was completed day before yesterday.  And I am headed out the door to do day two as soon as I hit Publish.

So, to answer the question, how am I doing, really?  Awesome.  Really, really good.  I am taking care of myself.  And I drank a Heineken while I cleaned out the fridge after Em told me she did not have a boyfriend.  Yet.  I got this.  It’s gonna be cool.

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Really Really Like is the new Like Like

Posted on February 23, 2012 | 5 comments

In the morning we stand on our porches and watch the kids go to the bus stop. The “bus stop” is the end of our neighbor’s driveway so they don’t have far to walk.   So while it does not require supervision it is supremely entertaining to watch Em and Kellan interact with one another in the morning.  Somehow their behavior in the morning is a glimpse in to the secret life they have at school.  By the time they get home in the afternoon and run around in the yard before the darkening sky indicates it is time to head in for dinner they are no longer kindergarteners, school children, it has all but worn off and they are just kids.

Yesterday morning as Em raced across the street Amy called from her front porch, “Em has a boyfriend.”  My eyes (without my glasses yet, admittedly) went right from Amy to Emily.  She continued on her path, darting across the street, but when Amy shouted the boy’s name, Em switched gears and suddenly instead of a six-year-old girl headed to the bus stop she was a linebacker, racing towards Kellan with all the strength her little 45 pound body can muster.  There was some truth to this story evidently.

She came home from school and was playing in the yard with Kellan while MQD and I made dinner last night.  “I want to ask Em about her boyfriend tonight, but we have to be cool, not push her and not laugh at her.  I want to make sure she can talk to us, yanno?”

We concluded that we could of course laugh at her behind her back all we wanted, the grand prize of parenting.  The laughter behind closed doors at your children’s expense.  (In case you think your parents never laughed at you, call one of them right now and ask,  I’d bet without hesitation they could recount a time when you did something completely absurd and you thought no one noticed at all. )

“I heard you have a boyfriend.  Kellan says he is nice. Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Because he’s not my boyfriend.”

“Do you like him?”

“Yeah. But I don’t really really really really like him.”

I waas only slightly less stunned when I heard the words Emily and boyfriend in the same sentence. How I miss that fuzzy haired girl.

“Did he ask you to be his girlfriend?”

“Yup.  I told him I had to think about it. And I think  I’m gonna say no.”

 “Why no?”

“Well. Because he pushes me down. Just when we are playing chase but…” And she curls her lip and shrugs. “They think I really really really like him. But I don’t. I mean I like him but…” And she shrugged again.

“Have you ever had a boyfriend before?”

“Well when I was in like preschool pretty much Kellan was my boyfriend but you already knew that.”And she smiled.

I think she will tell me. When there is something to report.

I’m proud of my girl. Not gonna win her over so easy.  Even though he does evidently wear “checked shirts, like, nice shirts.  Like Dad wears to work.”

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