Life's been good to me so far

Aaron is often the bane of my life, lately. This is historically true, too, but it's intensifying so much :/ I'm taking him back for assessment and possible OT because I can't tell anymore what is puberty, what is "him," and what is "he needs help."

His dance studio does a Halloween solo contest every year. It's today. He knows that. I reminded him a week ago, since they're supposed to go in costume and have music on a CD or MP3 player prepared, along with choreography in place. THEY also reminded him pretty thoroughly, when he was there dancing Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

It's light hearted and you can go for funny or inspiring or talented or whatever you want. The winner doesn't have to pass their tool sheet (prove they can do a million different individual skills) to be in the holiday solo show. Tool sheets are a huge pain in the ass, so that's a good incentive.

So yes, a week ago, I reminded him. He really impressed me by already having his music picked out and his choreography mostly done. He knew what he was going to wear. I was like, wow. This is awesome. Good job, Aaron.

Really I almost had a fucking heart attack, because Aaron is the reason he and everyone else (including the other dancer we carpool with) are late constantly, he still does things like tell me when we're already on the highway that he didn't bring shoes, things that even Elise has been past for several years and I don't always think to anticipate. He'll realize when we're almost to the studio, in late afternoon, that he hasn't eaten anything all day and didn't bring snacks, even though I set snacks out on the bar and directed his attention to them 5 times before we left. Or, he'll truly believe he hasn't eaten all day, and I'll remind him that he had two plates of breakfast and a handful of pistachios and a fruit leather, and he'll go, "Oh yeah...well, I'm still hungry." O_O

He has to move the laundry through and start more, daily, as one of his chores, and approximately every other day he's SO UPSET because he didn't put the dryer on high heat or start it and so the stuff in the dryer is still wet.

Anyway, so far so good with the solo show, as of last week, right? I talked to him Thursday and he said he knew how he was going to store and transport the song, and he had the choreography all done. I mentioned it to him again Friday...and Saturday...and yesterday/Sunday, with an emphasis on having all his stuff ready to go before he went to bed so it wouldn't even be a thing. Today it was the first thing I said when I saw him, after our "Good morning hug" - he and I have this good morning hug thing we've been doing since he was a baby, and even if it's dinner time when one of us realizes we didn't do it, we still do it then. We hugged, I mentioned it, he acted totally prepared and uber casual.

I'm sure you see where this is going. Isaac was at cheerleading, I had went and dropped Ananda off somewhere and taken Jake and Elise to Laura's house. Back at the ranch, it was just he and I, with keys jangling in my hand, and it was Time To Go to Dance.

First, he was shocked that there was no time for a shower. I told him that I'd been giving him a countdown to leaving all day and of course there wasn't time. He got grumpy, but moved on.

Except then he had no belt, and no idea where a belt was, and had to take pants to wear that fall down without one. No, he had no idea where the belt we gave him for those particular pants was. We got that crisis navigated (Jake's old karate belt worked in a way that didn't show), and were about 5 minutes past the latest point we really should have left. I was headed out the door, when he let the bomb drop.

He had no idea where his MP3 player was, only that it was dead and would need to charge before he loaded the song on it.

This kind of shit flabbergasts me. I have to stop and take a deep breath. Aaron is the only one of my kids that I ever really yell at, or truly lay into. And I didn't today...I mean in general.

He is also the absolute worst at looking right past shit he's trying to find. The scale of "how good are you at finding things?" at my house runs Isaac (amazing) to Aaron (are you even serious?!).

He did a decent job of improvising, after (miraculously) finding it under his bed - he ended up with his entire laptop in the van with us, since it has the song, with the MP3 player on the car charger, and we left the house 15 minutes before the contest started (it's a 35 minute drive). Because of how they structure it, I suppose all will be well in the end. Which sort of infuriates me, since I want him to learn some sort of lesson so that this behavior isn't reinforced as being alright (he has not went to dance at all because he's not ready on time more than once, in the last month).

Thus, most of the drive was spent talking about how much stress he experienced this afternoon, and how much anxiety he caused me, and how that is the thing to remember the next time he feels he has enough time to put off preparing. How it can be a mistake to learn from so that he gets to have everything turn out fine without the bs scrambling, in the future.

Except what adult has even fully learned that lesson? As far as I can tell University students operate almost completely on last minute cramming of all sorts, and it's the way Grant's entire company functions. Putting out fires. I want to give my kids the ability to be better at this kind of stuff than us - I know I am better than I used to be at planning and time management (I have to be...too many balls in the air, they'd all fall otherwise), and it's a huge source of satisfaction.

Which is why, rather than using this hour at Panera to write a paper due Wednesday, I've spent it ranting about bs O_o

The thing is, this solo contest deal is one example among millions. It's a never ending struggle with him, all day every day. Yet.

He creates and renders animations Grant assigns, in Blender.
He writes amazing piano music that leaves people speechless.
He writes and mixes music in FL Studios.
He seeks out documentaries and comes to me to talk about the content.
He did in fact choreograph a dance that he's doing in front of people and is probably knocking their collective socks off as I type.

It's such a mixed bag to make any sense of. He's got this can all cut up, wrapped around the antennae for our wireless router, and he's convinced it boosts the signal because of some YouTube tutorial that Ananda keeps adamantly declaring "WAS DEBUNKED BY CRASH COURSE!"

Last night Annie was scolding and yelling at someone, in the bathroom behind a closed door while she brushed her teeth, and when I was like, "What the heck is happening in there?!" she said "Aaron is on the roof, playing drums on that metal thing that spins above the bathroom, and it's REALLY annoying. I can hear him laughing at me through the vent!"

Which is...hilarious. We burst out laughing together before I took a deep breath and walked out to call him down.

I really appreciate who he is, even as I hope nobody calls the cops and struggle not to throttle him.

I'm also out of time.

And things I have, perhaps, let lie unsaid too long - here is an entry I wrote more than a year ago and kept privatized to see if I still wanted to say it all, later:

I still want to say it all, except maybe for that bit at the very end.

So, for whatever reason, Aaron has always had this radar for us having sex. None of my other kids have ever seemed to pick up on it - Ananda is one to just turn a blind eye to it whenever anything she doesn't like is going on and just pretend it doesn't exist, so maybe she just doesn't bring it up?

A whole lot of years ago we were camping (I think we only had three kids, so A and A would have been 5 and 6 at most) and they had all been asleep for awhile, and Grant and I got into something REALLY hush-hush and subtle and Aaron pipes up at full volume, "Dad why is Mom making those weird noises?"

I will admit I am not really one to gauge my own volume. I tend to be kind of shocked by how loud I'm told I am afterward. This was truly practically nothing though, like breathing patterns. Mortifying.

Flash forward to when we first moved into this house, so I guess he would have been about 7-8. Our bedroom flooring wasn't done and so we were using the tv room to sleep in, on an air mattress next to the couch. Our tv room is a very defined separate room far from the kids' bedrooms, and has pocket doors that were closed most of the way so we'd hear if someone started screaming or something (Elise was still really little). It was dark.

Grant and I were completely done and laying there half asleep when, again at full conversational dinner table volume, we hear Aaron go "Hey Mom, what do you think about -?" I don't even remember what he was asking, but we jumped halfway to standing, it was ridiculous. He was just sitting there on the couch like it was the most normal thing in the world. I have NO IDEA to this day how long he was there for, Grant just kind of leapt up to help him out with whatever he needed while I tried not to die laughing and then we wondered if we should be worried or something.

Sidetrack: We got home from somewhere as a family not long ago to drop the kids off so they could watch a movie while we went to the grocery store. We all got out of the van and went in, Grant turned it on, there was the normal people running to bathrooms and getting a drink of water that happens as we arrive. G and I got back in the van and went like 3 blocks and then Aaron says from the third row, "Where are we going?" in total confusion.

I do not understand that kid's level of obliviousness. I stopped and made him walk home (with a call to Annie to tell me as soon as he got there). It's an ongoing battle with us for him to GET OUT OF THE VAN when we get home because for some reason he always wants to like, lay down and go to sleep or something once everyone else is out. Three times a week we realize house and car are locked, everyone else is settled, and Aaron is still in the van. Sheesh.

Anyway, what inspired this entry is that I am totally unable to ascertain how soundproof our bedroom is or is not at a given time, or who it's bothering (Hint: It's Aaron). We have a set up where you walk through a part of the master bath to get to the bedroom, which is great because we can close two doors in between our room and the hallway, with space in between. We also frequently have a fan going and/or pandora turned on if not up, or if we're in the bath water going and music turned up. We try to station them on the complete other end of our very long and not acoustic house, like with an activity or lunch or a movie to go to sleep to or something, before we shut the doors.

But he keeps absolutely killing me with these kinds of "Mom it seemed like you were saying Oh a bunch of times in there last night" or "How come whenever you and Dad take a bath, you're like, screaming" questions *headdesk* I'm not sure if he's just enjoying having me along/playing innocent - because they KNOW about sex - or if he is really confused about what's going on - which is possible because, as previously stated, Aaron is really oblivious. G and I still joke in private all the time about how he referenced us "doing the thingy" in horror when I told him I was going to the doctor to get an IUD.

I heard my parents having sex at his age and fully understood it as sex and just didn't care. It wasn't an event in any way, it was like how I could hear my sister playing or a dog barking next door. I mean they were in their room with the door shut, it wasn't like paraded throughout the house or something, and I guess I am a little more, uh. Vocal, than my mother? Bleh, eww, the thought of parental sex still makes me wanna puke :p My good friend Kathy told me her parents had like an 8 hour block of time every Sunday that was Do Not Disturb hours where they kept their bedroom door locked and she thought it was adorable, even in high school.

I guess I'm gonna have to have some kind of Conversation with him and quit dodging, because there is no way to guarantee he's sleeping all the time, Grant generally has to go to sleep before any of the rest of us, and I'm not going to quit having sex until they're all out of the house. For all of you who are going to ask, no I can't really enjoy it silently - I've already got a pillow over my face most of the time :p

My hesitation is just that I think it's awkward and weird to be going through puberty and aware of people getting it on audibly close by - I have very distinct memories of being on the phone with someone who was totally disgusted that he could hear his parents and was yelling "Oh my God SHUT UP!" and throwing sneakers across the hall at their bedroom door from his bunk in disgust. I don't want to get into that kind of thing, or be like AWARE that they're aware as shit's going down. Ugh.

Geez man sometimes balancing "myself" and "myself as a mom" is a lot of bs. I like the idea of them understanding sex is pleasurable and part of a healthy relationship and knowing their mom and dad love each other, but it's still bs :p

Elise chases Sophie (cat) until she can pin her with half her body weight. Then she stands and grabs her around her middle, hauls her up meowing in protest to her chest, uses a knee and a jump to make her butt come up to where she can get the WHOLE cat in her arms, by which point the cat is nearly screaming, twists her around, hoists one more time, and is then holding her like a baby. Sophie meows one more time, in a quiet, defeated and grumpy way, and Elise looks into her eyes and says softly, "I know, you're in love with me".

---

Ananda, Aaron and I were browsing through the Harry Potter tag on Tumblr. I was watching an interview with Jason Isaacs (Lucius Malfoy) on the Today Show at the Wizarding World of HP up in Orlando (where we really want to go).
Aaron: This is boring. Find another one with the twins.
Me: I want to see this.
Annie, in a perfect British accent: Mum fancies him.

---

Elise, holding her ferret up towards me - What this made of? Yarn?
Me, blinking: Uh. It's alive, honey. He's made of skin and fur and blood and organs, like you. He came out of a mama ferret.
Elise: Oh...me thought...nevermind.

---

Elise: You have pee on your butt!
Me: You have boogers in your eyelashes!
Elise: You have poop on your head!
Me: You have slime in your belly button!
Aaron, not even looking up from the Mario Wii he's playing: Bloody pus bucket maggot factory!
Ananda: OWNED!

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The other day I really needed a nap. I gave my kids some food and then a list of suggested activities and set my alarm for an hour and a half later. When I got up, they were SO EXCITED because Aaron had taken the training wheels off of Isaac's bike and taught him to ride it while I was sleeping. This was a serious parenting impasse for me because,

1. They are NOT allowed outside while I'm sleeping.
2. The 3 younger kids are NOT allowed out FRONT (where there's a street, no fence, etc) without an adult, period.
3. Aaron accomplished this partially through riding Grant's bike alongside him, IN A CAST. Because his foot is already broken, FROM BIKE STUNTS.
4. You kind of just want to be consulted about your clumsiest and most accident prone kid getting put on the asphalt with no helmet or pads, when to take off the training wheels, ET-FREAKING-CETERA!

BUT!

1. Aaron and Isaac are my two kids who never get along, ever. Since Isaac was a baby they have had the least love and the most genuine irritation and fighting. They just make each other miserable. So this was a HUGE show of solidarity and Aaron was blowing my mind with how GOOD he was to him. I mean it is a shocking thing going on here.
2. He apparently did a great job because Isaac is riding all over like an old pro now, I mean he rides like he's always ridden or something, and is SO HAPPY about it, when Grant and I really wouldn't have even considered it was time for him to learn. He didn't get hurt in any way, or even fall at all from what I understand.
3. They were both so shiningly excited to unveil this fabulous surprise to me.

I settled on watching the demonstration and clapping wildly, then sitting them down for a serious talk on how NOT OK some of this is for ever doing again and how they will get punished if there is a "next time", followed by reiterating the part I am proud of and taking pics and video, and then pulling Aaron aside for additional anecdotes about things that could have gone horribly wrong.

Please forgive me if I sound preachy, it's not at all my intention.

I've been seeing a lot of posts in communities and, of course, on my friends' page, about peoples' baffling baby/toddler/preschooler problems. I also listen to my sister struggle to solve her own toddler issues on a pretty regular basis. There's been a higher concentration of this kind of thing than usual, lately, and it made me realize that I don't really do much in the way of kid-centric posting, anymore. I still raise and interact with my kids all day long, of course. I just don't see a lot that's actually baffling. It's a lot of repetition. Which leads me to a conclusion.

The epiphany is that all those problems? Kid won't eat, kid's eating too much, kid won't sleep, kid hates bath, kid suddenly became cripplingly shy, kid no long respects your authority... that's just stuff kids do, man. They're all completely temporary problems that rarely indicate anything serious, and in the vast majority of cases you can research and network until you're blue in the face and NOTHING YOU DO WILL FIX IT. Time fixes it. You ride it out. That's...it. Even when it IS serious or could be something long term...there's not usually much you can do about that. Except love, nurture, watch, wait.

I was trying to come up with a way to phrase this in someone's post without sounding really stuck up or just increasing her frustration. Because I think it can actually be really, really liberating. I remember dissecting infant-Ananda's reactions to pooping and her sleepy-time sighs to the point of being at the pediatrician once a week. FOR NOTHING. I remember losing my mind about how in the world to keep Aaron off the table or get Isaac to stop scaling the counters, I kept going to forums and communities for ANSWERS and HELP. (the answer is to get them down whenever you see them up there, even if it's ten times an hour, for months, sometimes losing your temper and sometimes refusing to react, until eventually...they outgrow the urge to do that and you realize they haven't been up there for awhile)

With Jake and Elise, it's been kind of a relief to really understand and feel how temporary each of these sorts of things are. To know that in a year, it will definitely be some completely different thing baffling me about them than it is now. Some things DO require a lot of care and research...like, you know, diagnosable mental conditions and rare diseases and such. Major nursing problems that will sabotage the ability to breastfeed or clues that your child has been abused. Mostly, though, parenting young kids involves great heaping doses of love and surviving until they're bigger.

I'm really not advocating apathy as a parenting strategy. I continue to note that when I do less one on one time with anyone, it results in poorer behavioral results for that one. And each kid definitely needs their own tailored strategies. I just stopped wondering what in the world I was doing wrong and using every spare second they were occupied or unconscious to comb the web for solutions...for totally normal stuff that is SUPPOSED to make you nuts because that's what parenting IS. I really don't care anymore about the artificial color I can omit from a diet to help my little one with their really late cradle cap/aversion to long car rides/desire to go barefoot outside when they need shoes on. I fight with my three youngest about bedtime despite their highly consistent routine just like I did their older brother and sister. For an hour or more. While doing other stuff and without a lot of angst because, hello, obviously I'm going to fight with them about it but eventually they'll all simultaneously lay still long enough to surrendur. Then I settle in to watch a movie with Grant or veg out on the computer and I wake up without it even crossing my mind, the next day. Because I really don't think that I suddenly stumbled upon The Solution to Ananda and Aaron's bedtime woes. I stuck with the whole bedtime thing, but that's not really a magical cure. They just got older.



Prediction: I am going to do the same thing when latency ends for Ananda and Aaron and we're on adolescence. Then somewhere around the middle of Isaac's teen years I'll snap out of it and learn to roll with it as Jake slams out of the house or Elise screams at us about injustice. We'll still talk about it, there will still be consequences, but I will no longer be reading "How to pick apart and then micromanage your teen's quirks".

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All that said, kid updates:

Ananda has lost interest in riding bikes with me, which is sad. She's developed a new love for Greek yogurt and a renewed aversion to brushing her hair. As part of our budgetary downsizing we've started frequenting the library again, which she is OVER THE MOON about. Also, after a talk with Dance Empire today, they can totally keep going whether we can pay in the immediate future or not, which was a huge relief and a lot of excitement for her. I didn't want them to even know this was a concern until we knew one way or the other, but Grant thought he should talk with them about how they might be dropping out soon in case they did and it was apparently weighing on her a lot. She's having another up-shooting growth spurt and this one has noticeably thinned her out for the first time in awhile. She's looking more graceful than I've ever seen her, and really pretty.

Aaron is kind of meh on the dancing at the moment, back on the unicycle and starting to be able to do all of his chores without any struggle. He's constantly trying to be funny, and is just barely successful enough that I don't kill him for how annoying it is the rest of the time. His obsessions for the week are acquiring spitballs from thinkgeek.com and getting the Christmas stuff out of the attic. Because he has 3 or 4 pairs and they're what he dances in 3 times a week, he seems to ALWAYS be in black basketball shorts and either a black or burgundy tank top. This simple, solid-colored getup only enhances his crazy gorgeousness and general athletic hoohaw.

Both of them are looking forward to a friend's birthday party at the skating rink this weekend and tired of me having a sore throat and not reading to them at night.

Isaac has been less whiny and miserable since we started him on daily probiotics several months ago - thank you commonreader. I will always call you commonreader, there's no fighting it! Anyway, his hair is a quarter inch or so longer than it has been in a year and as such, the orange is creeping back in. He cannot get enough of the Abeka handbook for reading or any of his workbook work...I think he will reading very soon, he spends an exorbitant amount of his free time doing things like writing "HAT" with a hat drawn above it, or laboriously printing the entire (all caps) alphabet. He hates PATH at the park, and every other physical thing, and asks for sedentary things (movies, computer time, sugary snacks and board game competition, mostly) all day long. His two biggest recent issues - hysteria when dropped off anywhere and poop complications - seem to be mostly a thing of the past. He's huge on counting down to things, like Christmas and his birthday and church and whatever else, and sleeps with a St Nicholas medal.

Jake is so awesome that I'm not sure any of the rest of us are cool enough to hang out with him. He wakes up in the morning, stretches, smiles and says, "Good morning Mom. This is going to be a great day." He says hi to everyone we see in the grocery store. He wears giant sunglasses and has a huge afro. He hasn't asked to do things like get himself a snack or go out in our fenced side yard to play in so long I can't remember; he's a free agent. When things are funny or outrageous he gives you "The crazy eyes" which means he opens his eyes wider than I physically can manage, myself, with his mouth turned down and tiny. Generally speaking when you suggest an activity to Jake his reply is, "What a good idea!" and he tells me often that we're best friends. Giving him anything is really gratifying; he accepts anything with joyous surprise and "Thank you so much! That's so nice of you!" and a massive hug. And he shares and plays with, cares for and entertains Elise a lot. He is also the one who will snap and slap when he's angry, on his siblings, and everytime this happens I think to myself, "I'm Rick James, bitch!"

Elise is in all 3 and 4t clothes, and size 10 shoes. She is really, REALLY affectionate. I wonder often if she is really that affectionate, or if she's making up some of the deficit that I can't ever lift her. But she co-sleeps with us for the second half of the night, nurses several times a day, gives me countless squeezy hugs and kisses, hugs and is carried by Annie at least hourly, demands that Grant carry her anytime he is around...it's just normal to find her cuddled with Jake under a blanket, to have her stroking your face, to see her wrapped around my brother's calf like a giant ankle weight...it gets overwhelming sometimes, you just can't sit down without her immediately being in your lap and not just in your lap, but stroking your face, squeezing your neck and kissing you. She hugs and kisses every mobile baby she sees at the park or who is over here, and cradles her dolls, and lays on top of the cat saying "Mama's kitty, and me". I think her two favorite things in the world are to lay in bed under a blanket with me, and to get in the kozy carrier with Grant. Either puts this massive loopy grin on her face like her eyes are about to roll back in her head from ecstasy. She is really not interested in our authority AT. ALL. And gets pretty loud about her disinterest, at times. She continues to be at or above average in pretty much everything.

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As for me. Lemme tell you about Starbucks. I go to one particular one pretty often, in the Prius, while A and A dance. It is consistently this bizarrely meat-market-y environment. I mean, for Starbucks. I know I'm more aware of this because it's basically the only place I go without kids anymore, and people perceive me really differently when I have five kids with me and am driving the minivan. But...come on.

There is this one barista guy who always flirts and talks a lot with me when I order; he's harmless and I get the impression that is his personality in general. But like I got some nuts once and he seriously stumbled over double entendres about his own nuts for, like, 2 solid minutes while I waited to pay. I got this one salad twice and then didn't come back for a month, and when I did (on Monday) he yelled to me as soon as I walked in the door, "Oh, no, we're out of farmer's market salads!"

There is also a general thing where everytime I go there is some (different) guy in there alone, either also on a laptop, or more creepily just sitting and staring around - and everytime I glance up, I'm looking into whoever it is eyes. This is somewhat amplified because there is also always AT LEAST one couple there on a date. Who goes on a date to Starbucks? Do people really do this? I mean it seems like a date, a guy in business-casual reeking of cologne and acting nervous and a girl dressed up with a ton of makeup laughing loudly and often.

Today, they were packed, like I was going to have to take my laptop to the bar, which I don't really like for a variety of reasons but oh well, first world problems and all that. But even the bar seat that has an outlet was taken. I eventually found a cushy chair near that seat, when the girl who was sitting in it asked if I wanted to sit there - she had only books - and I was like, oh it's ok, and she was like, no really, come on, right now. Uh, ok. So she ended up scooting only one seat over, and staring at me with a huge smile on her face as I set my stuff up. So we're there on a row of 10 empty bar seats, next to each other, and she's like, touching my arm as she talks and looking into my eyes the whole time she's smiling, with her books seemingly forgotten, and I'm like, trying to subtly position my laptop and body so that she won't glance up and see the insanity I'm writing.

I don't know. It's surreal to step into this environment of people who are seeing me regularly and...don't know I'm a married mother of five who is not normally driving a small red car. And can only possibly focus on my writing for hours if I'm far from my house.

Sidenote: at some point college-aged people started looking...like "kids", to me. I'm only 28 here, wtf? It's kind of like how it was the first time I drove past my old high school at dismissal time when I was about 22, and went "...whoa. Those are...kids. How in the hell was I that age and driving, and pregnant?" What I like about this perception of mine, and how it changes, is that at least thus far, I've stopped seeing people more than a couple of years younger than me as really attractive, and started seeing them as, well, kids, basically. Younger people. My own peer group has stayed the one that looks "normal" to me and seems ideal as far as attractiveness goes. I think 30 year olds must have sort of looked old to me when I was a teenager, but now they totally just look like "normal people". I can't really imagine a 30 year old as seeming old. As opposed to kids (22 and under), or older people (45 and over). Likewise when I see pictures of myself at 17, aside from being horrified at how photogenic I am not, I think I look crazily young and can't believe I was becoming a mother, blah blah blah. There is this "little girl"ness. I don't like, look in the mirror now and go whoa I'm looking old. I actually just look like a grownup now. Which is obviously fine. *shrug* I wonder how long this can hold, is it possible to be 50 and think 30 year olds look like kids and 50 is where the real relatable hotness is? 70? What?

Related: I keep seeing old pictures of current hot celebrities and thinking, wow, they look a lot better now than they did in the 80s. Which is a big leap, to say that an adult has gotten more attractive over the course of 20odd years. But, say, Johnny Depp? Gwen Stefani? I am not talking about people like Madonna who are obviously plastic'd up.