Mom and Pop Place Blog

Here’s my baby, all set for the first day of kindergarten!  He’s smiling so hard his face might explode.  Yesterday was his first day of school.  I have to say, we were both very calm about it.  Gage was excited, but not overly so.  Not enough to be nervous or wakeful the night before.  He knows the school and the teacher very well from his brother going there.  Gage feels like it’s already “his” school.  He knows the building and the routine.  He walked right in with his class and hung up his coat and took his seat.  I lingered a little while to soak it all in.  But, I realized he was ready for school to start.  I waited until another parent left.  (I didn’t want to be the first mom to leave.  How heartless……..)  Then I gave him a high-five, snapped this picture, wished the teacher good luck and left.  For the first time in 6 years of first-days-of-school, I didn’t cry.  I almost choked up over that fact.  Are my boys so grown up that first-day-of-school doesn’t make me cry?

Oh well, I’m sure I will have plenty of chance for them to make me cry.

Adria

Here’s my little guy busy at work at his Art Stand.  He was inspired by our neighbors, who hosted a successful Lemonade stand last week.  He and his brother sat in the yard and watched cars stop and give the neighbors money for lukewarm Kool-Aid.  It seemed like magic.  Money for nothing?!   My kids like money.  They instantly started begging to have a sale themselves.  Kool-Aid was not an option: we don’t have any Kool-Aid.  They wanted to sell their broken toys: that seemed less than classy to me.

I wanted to come up with something that actually helped them understand entrepreneurship.  Selling broken toys (that technically belonged to ME) didn’t teach them much about the marketplace.  So I suggested they create something on their own to sell.  My oldest son immediately lost interest.  He’s not my most imaginitive.  That’s ok.  But Gage, my youngest son, was captivated.  He immediately set to work with watercolors and glitter glue and created over 15 works of art.  He’s an amazing artist, if I do say so myself.  I just love to watch him as he loses himself in the worlds he creates in his artwork.  He loves it.  People say to him “Maybe you’ll be an artist when you grow up.”  He always replies the same way.  Gives them a  puzzled look and says “I’m already an artist.”

So, Gage set up his stand and started offering his art to passers-by.  He thought 10 cents was a fair price.  I talked him up to 25 cents.  He sold about 8 paintings the first evening.  He sat out there for almost 2 hours, looking expectantly at each car that passed.  I couldn’t stop watching him from the window.  Pretty soon, my oldest son started to wonder just what he had passed up.  He tried to go sell a handful of Matchbox cars alongside his brother.  But, the creativity conoisseurs in our neighborhood weren’t interested in Matchbox cars.  They know art when they see it.

Today is Mother’s Day and I barely saw my kids.  They were playing with neighbors all afternoon.  They went back and forth between our yards and playrooms.  They even ate dinner over there.  Meanwhile, I worked in the yard, cleaned the kitchen, checked my email.  All those decadent things that non-parents take for granted.

I feel like, as my kids get older, life gets better and better.  I’ve loved every stage of their lives but, the older they get, the more fun we seem to have.  With a little baby, so much of your day is dedicated to just keeping your kids alive: diaper changes, nursing sessions, shoe-and-car-seat-fastenings.  Now, my kids are getting so independent!  They get their own snacks, make up their own games, and (sometimes) entertain themselves.  The Milestones of Independence for me are when my kids can:

1. Poop without help (preferably in a toilet).

2. Sleep through the night without help.

3. Put their shoes on without help.  (Maybe even take them off before they run through the kitchen.)

4. Fasten their seatbelts without help.

5. Pour a drink without help.

6. Put themselves to bed at night (we’re nowhere near this one yet).

There are a lot of things I miss about having little babies.  Ok, not a “lot”, but “some”. Each of the Milestones I mentioned represents giving up a duty that I won’t miss.  I know my kids still need me and love me.  I just don’t have to wipe their butts to show it.  I’m enjoying the unique, independent people that they are becoming.  As their personalities come through, our family feels more and more complete.

Happy Mother’s Day

Someone (and by “someone”, I mean my sister.  (Hi Sis!  I’m bloggin’ about you!)) asked me today what I thought was the single most important piece of advice I would offer for a new mom.  It’s tough to think of just one, singlularly important piece of advice.  I can think of lots of important things I didn’t learn until I became a Mom:

1.  Your cats really aren’t as loveable as you thought they were.  They’re just animals.  That we let poop in our house.

2.  You won’t be able to wear jewelery for about 1 to 2 years.  Unless it’s made of Cheerios and has a break-away clasp.

3.  You don’t even know what “tired” means until you have a baby.  People who use the phrase “sleeping like a baby” have no idea what they’re talking about.

But if I had to boil down all the things I have learned about parenting into one piece wisdom, I would offer this advice: Trust your child.  He will only ask for what he needs.   He needs to be near his mom.  He needs to nurse all the time.  He needs to be held and loved .   Often, he needs all these things in the middle of the night.  These are not things he does to manipulate you.  You can trust that these are things he asks for because he needs them.  Don’t be afraid to give your baby what he asks for.  I firmly believe that what a baby wants is what a baby needs.  If he cries to nurse, it’s because he needs to feed.  Even if he just nursed 30 minutes ago.  If he cries to be picked up, it’s because he needs to be held close and reassured for some reason.  Trust him.  Trust him that he knows what he needs. 

After I offered her this gem of advice, the “someone” I was speaking to (Hi sis!) gazed over at our collective, school-aged children fighting with each other and asked me with a laugh how we know when to STOP trusting our children.  Good question.  A baby is not capable of manipulation, but a second-grader most certainly is.  (Let me tell you.) Where do you draw the line?  I maintain that, as you learn to trust your baby, you really get to know your child.    You get to know what they really need when they are asking for something.  If a baby cries to nurse, he needs to eat.   As that same baby gets older, he may still cry to nurse, but his needs may change.  He still needs milk, but he also needs love and reassurance and comfort.  That is what he is truly asking for.  He’s telling you what he needs (comfort), by crying for what he wants (milk).  Since you got to know you baby so well by responding to his needs, you are able to interpret his needs.  Fast forward 7 years and that same “baby” is crying for a new Lego set.  (Just a random example, of course, this example baby is in no way modeled after a real 7-year-old in my life.)  You know he wants something, but he doesn’t actually need new Legos.   Since you are so tuned in to him, you can see that what he really wants is

A) a new, novel toy 

B) a sign of your love in material form

C) something to make his classmates jealous

D) something fun to play with when he’s soooooooo bored

Of course, you are not obligated to give him any of these things.  (He’s not the boss of you!)  But, once you realize what he really wants, you can meet his needs.  You could have him count his money and buy himself a new toy at the second-hand shop.  You could sit down together and write each other love notes.    You could help him make a cool craft he could bring to school for show-and-tell.  Because you trusted his as a baby and got to know him, you learned to interpret his wants and understand his needs.  You learned how to meet his needs without buying a new $50 toy.

So, in conclusion,  trusting your baby will save you $50.  You’re welcome.

We’ve been considering (only about 25% seriously) about getting rid of our TV. The Digital Conversion seemed like a logical time. Our TV is tiny (remarkably tiny: I think my iPod screen is bigger) and gets crummy reception. The digital converter box is worth more than the TV itself. Wouldn’t it sound cool to tell people “We don’t have a TV.”? I already tell people “We don’t watch much TV.” But, we all say that, don’t we?  We watch enough: about an hour a day, five days a week.

I don’t think that TV actually sucks the intelligence out of your kids’ heads. It just keeps them away from living life and exploring their world, which is where kids really learn. Kids gain so much from just running around the yard or coloring with crayons. They even learn a lot from sitting around and being bored. (One of my kids should be a child genius by now, based on how much he complains about his boring life.)Even “educational programming” like Baby Einstein or PBS isn’t really going to teach kids much of value, no matter how much we want it to be true.

That being said, we do watch TV. This is February in Wisconsin. I’m no saint. There’s only so much sledding and origami and Legos an adult woman can handle. TV is my favorite thing right around 5PM when I’m trying to make dinner. The kids veg out for a while which leaves me free to sneak veggies into their food in peace. (Hey, I said I’m no saint.) Evenings are short in the winter. Bedtime seems to sneak up so fast. But, it’s amazing how much longer our evenings seem when the TV is off.

So that brings me around to this EPIC digital TV conversion. It seems like such a perfect milestone. We could make the decision to go TV-free without actually having to make a decision. Just by being lazy and failing to buy a converter box, we could become TV-Free-Parents-of-The-Year. But, a couple of weeks ago, I failed at failure. I went to Wal-Mart and bought a converter box. I blame Wisconsin. Wisconsin is cold which kept us cooped up inside all winter which exposed my kids to the collective germs of 150 kids on “inside recess”. So, I spent 6 days home with kids too sick to go to school but not sick enough to sleep all day and ket me worl from home. They were well enough to lay on the couch and cough and complain that there was nothing to do. I would have traded my firstborn son for a TV with clear reception and more than 3 channels. (Actually, had I traded my firstborn son, my problem would have been solved.) Instead, I went to WalMart and traded $10 for a digital converter box.
So, my TV-free dreams are dashed. Or, they will be if I ever figure out how to hook up the box.

Adria