Mothering Many

It’s birthday party time here at Chez Many, and while we usually indicate “no presents” for parties, we did not get the word out for Spidey’s party, and one of his guests brought him the coolest toy. Let me just say that what Corvette spoilers are to the man, so Hot Wheels accessories are to the boy. He got the V-Drop Super Velocity Track Set, and it was put together and played with at. the. party. Ice cream was left for this toy, ya’ll. By 8 year olds.

Obviously, I can’t speak as to longevity at this point, but for now, this toy is a winner.

Sometime ago, like in October, which was three lifetimes in the past, I attended some training sessions for my role as Cub Master. As part of that we covered the ages and stages boys go through as they move through scouting, and I knew at the time I wanted to discuss it here for ya’l, but as things tend to do, it just slipped through the cracks. Except!! I have been writing a massive to-do list (when I finally got started on it today, it totaled 6.5 pages, that’s practically a mattress ya’ll), and guess what? That’s right, typing this post was on it. Along with many other things, HA! Anyway, here we go.

Seven year olds have a very difficult time with time. They have no concept of “later”, life is now or never. They are also very literal.

Nine year olds are into verbal violence. Dork, retard, and I’m going to kill you are real high on their list of cute things to say (personal experience indicates that this phase can last well into the teen years).

Eleven years olds need clear instructions, preferably just a few steps at a time. “Clear the table” may be more than they can handle, but they can certainly handle the job if it’s broken down for them.

Thirteen year olds are all about the fair. They want to make sure that everyone is treated equally (experience indicated that this phase can begin as early as eight in some kids).

Sixteen year olds are able to understand rules and their function. They are good with younger kids and able to think of others.

Eighteen year olds are beginning to show even more adult skills. They can delay gratification, compromise and set goals (and work toward them).

I hope you enjoyed following along on our trip. I did not realize that the posts would not format correctly, so I am going to cut and paste it here, in the order that I posted it, along with some pertinent twitters. Then I’ll delete the messy stuff, hoping that Google has not crawled in the past couple of days, because broken links can hurt your page rank, and I really don’t want to go any lower than my current ZERO.

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We’re outta here!!!!!
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Finally, we’re actually on the road. Caravan to Charlotte.
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Do you see age spots? I do not see age spots. Country says there are age spots. I say she is seeing things.
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Just called my grandma’s. Yearly dose of guilt duly received. Sigh and cry.
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Lunch at Golden Corral complete with banana pudding and chocolate chess pie. Cool Whip overload.
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Here is our room. My girls and another cheerleader. Our arch-nemesis team is here on the same floor.
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At hotel. Sorta boring. Pool closed. Just like everything else on Thanksgiving.
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Hanging about, waiting for pizza (very expensive pizza) and hair-dos (those are free)
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The lengths we go to! And wait til you see Country.
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What we did to Country
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We are here at the stadium. At the stadium, excitement incredible, adrenaline an actual touchable substance. We have 4ish hours of watching before we take the mat.
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The girls nailed it
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8 states worth of Pop Warner cheerleaders, upper 3 divisions on the floor, the big wait begins. Orlando or no Orlando?
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Did not get a nod, will not advance.

As part of their conditioning, both the cheerleaders and the football players do push ups. The coaches also use them for discipline, and a few days ago when the children were being particularly fractious, I handed some out as well. Much to my surprise, DaBaby hopped down to give me 20, too! LOL!

I’ve had a couple of things happen in my mothering journey lately that I want to talk about, and although they seem unrelated, my response to them is the same: Kids are kids. Like a realtor hawking “location, location, location”, I want to chant “let them be, let them be, let them be”.

We began the yearly round of dentist visits last month, and the dentist put sealants on the baby teeth my kids had. Now, I have nothing against sealants per se, the idea is sound. But then the kids were told no gum or sticky candy. Whoa and back up. Is that a dental decision or a parenting decision? Who is gum made for? And what if I prefer for my children to have starburst over a jawbreaker? In fact, the receptionist said “you’d be better off eating chocolate”. I guess I’m partly aggravated because it was not explained to me BEFORE the sealants were put on that I would need to monitor everything my kids ate forever. Sigh. Am I now a bad parent because I don’t see candy as inherently evil? Whatever. Here, you want some gum? You can brush your teeth later, but for now… enjoy!

The other thing had to do with cheerleading. (Oh, I need to post some pictures and tell you about competition so remind me, but that’s not gonna happen in this post.) I watched the competition yesterday, and while it was fun, it reminded me a lot of the beauty pageants. I saw little girls, 6 and 7 years old in full makeup. That’s just….wrong. A little lip gloss to make them feel like a princess on their special day is one thing, but these babies had on as much makeup as I did. Wrong, I say! I also saw a lot of those hair pieces with the corkscrew curls. Those did look awful cute bouncing around on the back of the girls’ heads, I must say, but I worry if it send the message to them that their own hair isn’t pretty enough, or if they see it as just a fun thing to do, like playing dress-up.

You want your kids to grow up, ya know? But not so quick. Not before it’s time.

Dear self: please remember to tell DH to go pay for the boys football pictures this week. These would be the ones they had taken week before last when the checkbook stayed at home and that didn’t get paid for last week because the checkbook was empty, even though it was at the game. Because one day those boys may be famous, and play Penn State football and you will want them to remember you hauled them to football games back in the day.

Boys and Dh= off to football games
Big girls= off to get pictures made
Two babies= still at home with
Me= hopping

and this concludes our maternal poetry interlude.

You know, sometimes I am so proud of my children. In a couple weeks, on te 13 of October, I’m going to be participating in The Alzheimer’s Association Memory Walk. In fact, I am organizing the event for my little town. And the reason I am so proud of my kids is that most of them are jumping in behind me with both feet, ready to do whatever they can. I love that!

Hey, let me ask for your help, too! Could I get you to click this banner, and donate a little but for Alzheimer’s research?

Thanks!

As for me, I’ll probably fill up a good chunk of my new 1GB SD card that day. And, yes! Of course, I’ll share!

So, we got the game schedules, and for us, for the next two months, Saturday equals football. We have 5 kids either playing or cheering, and three different schedules to meet. It’s going to be an interesting couple of months, but then again, life in this house is always interesting. We have purchased a new cooler, and we’ll be packing lunches/suppers and making occasions of it all. Note to self: don’t forget the plates next time.

Of course, this leads to another question. It’s a question I am not quite sure I want to know the answer to, though. We’ve been in drought conditions for a couple of years now, and the fields are so nice and lush. I’ve lived here all my life–I know there’s only so much you can do with quality grass seed, and even the best lawn aerator cannot overcome a lack of water. So………how much water are they spending on that grass? The mind boggles. There are four greener than green fields there, and my own yard is pretty much brown and crispy, ya know?

Ann E. Way, the kids are having tons of fun, the season only lasts 8 more weeks (unless we go to playoffs), and it’s totally worth it that I spent more on sports equipment last month than I did on my mortgage. Right?

So, I finally got the kids’ game schedules. It’s not pretty. Our options seem to be stay at the field 10 hours, or make two trips most weeks. The exception is the week where most of the kids are on the field at the same time. Different fields. Yay! So far, my weekends are only eaten up through October, but I’m sure that’s because they haven’t finished the rest of the schedule yet. I surely do wish the boys were involved in a sport I understood, yk? I’ve tried, really. And dh explains it anew each fall, but I just. don’t. get. it.

See, I understand baseball. I understand soccer. I understand and enjoy the rodeo. In fact, if my kids were to get involved in rodeo, I wouldn’t mind having to be there for 10 hours every Saturday! The only ones I’ve seen live have been County Fair ones, but we also watch it on TV. I’d love to go to an event like the Houston Rodeo! The boys and I would totally get into the bull-riding and everyone else would enjoy the music and rides. Looking at last year’s Houston Rodeo Tickets schedule, I see that some of Country’s favorite acts played. If we win the lottery, maybe I can get Houston Rodeo concert tickets for all of us for next year’s she-bang. That would be rocking cool, especially if I could get my SIL and her family to meet us there!