The Challenge

I had a tough time yesterday with my middle child. Sometimes I call her my "high maintenance" child. Or my emotional child. Or intense. Or, as my sister calls it, my Challenge.

Two nights ago there was trouble. This child was told it was lights out and she didn't agree. She didn't feel tired, she told me, and wanted to play Barbies. I told her no. And Miss Challenge decided to pitch a fit (an expression that my good friend from western NY uses all the time. I just love the old-fashioned feel of it.) An all out, smack down, drag out temper tantrum. Just like my daughter, this fit was loud. It was insistent. It was wild.

When I said my child was intense, I meant that in a good way. Her feelings run deep and her sense of the world is sophisticated. I'll never forget once when she was about 3. It was a crisp fall day and the wind was blowing and my youngest was still a nursing infant and I was suffering from post-partum depression. And my intense daughter looked outside the window and said, "Boy. It sure is a windy fall day, mommy. It is really fall now!" And I just started to cry and the beautiful innocence of her observation. And she looked at me and asked me, "Don't you like the fall, mommy?" And I just hugged and hugged her.

She uses the word really freely and often. And I think that's because regular adjectives just don't convey her feelings. I remember when she was even younger and she'd tell us, "I'm starving!" Not hungry, mind you, but staaarrving.

The tantrums came later and they have only gotten worse. The child does not do well with the word "No" in any form and she makes sure we know how she feels. This recent one was a doozy, though. And it went on and on. We told her to stop. We brought her downstairs (so she wouldn't disturb the other kids trying to sleep. She ran right back upstairs). We threatened her. "If you don't' stop, you will not sleep over gram and pop's tomorrow." She didn't care. We tried to ignore it.

Obviously it finally ended. It always does. But there were books and clothes and blankets strewn all over the floor and consequences to follow up on. I'd decided to send her brother and sister to their grandparents' instead. If they'd all stayed home together, the middle child would not have minded so much. So I woke up next morning feeling hungover and very upset and called my folks to tell them the news. I also had to cancel a plan we had at a friends house for that night. And I knew that an entire day lay ahead of me filled with an angry and disappointed and intense child. Just me and her and her consequences. And I was dreading it.

But guess what, it was OK. Let me tell you, she was mad at first. Then she thought she'd be able to talk me into doing it her way. ("I'll clean everything up and say sorry and then we'll just pretend it didn't happen!") But I felt I needed to stick to what I'd said. Then she started to cry and wail and say terrible things about me. That's when I left her alone. When my dad came to pick up the other two she wouldn't come out from under the covers of her bed. And she stayed quietly in there pouting for another 45 minutes or so. Then I went to her and we talked. And she finally, thankfully, felt sorry. She's amazingly aware of how she feels and what she does and we were able to talk a little about what led to the fit. But mostly we talked about the consequence and how much it stunk and how it wasn't worth the whole tantrum to have to stay home alone all day and help mommy clean.

I don't know how you feel about this kind of thing. I'm guessing, though, that I'm comfortable and confident about what I did, based on the fact that I've retold it here. I'm often reluctant to tell stories of my "Challenge" because I don't know how it will sound to anyone not involved. But I think I needed to affirm to myself that I did indeed do the right thing and that I overcame this particular challenge, anyway. I'm interested to know what you think, though. I really am.

Sometimes, when I can look ahead about 10 years, I think that this child is going to be something big. She's so strong willed and so complex. As a woman, she'll never be pushed around and she'll probably do great things. But as my 10-year-old daughter, she's tough. As the mom in the children's book Olivia says, she wears me out. But I love her anyway.

She loves me anyway, too.

Life

I don't know about you, but all this life is good/ I'm so lucky crap is getting a little annoying.

As hard as I try to look on the bright side and count my blessings, some days I just feel like dog doo-doo. A great psychologist friend of mine would tell me that it can be both: You can be grateful for life's gifts and feel like shit all at once. And I suppose that's just where I am.

Take this morning, for instance. I stayed up watching reruns until midnight - didn't even watch my favorite, Sex and the City. This seemed like a reasonable time to me since my alarm doesn't go off until almost 8 on summer mornings so I was getting the sleep this 40-something princess needs. The problem was my dear husband woke me at 6:15. He had something he just had to tell me, the dear. It couldn't wait. He got very close to my ear and whispered, "There's something wrong with the computer, honey." Huh? What? What's wrong?

"It smells like it's burning.

Bye. Have a good day."

Great. And good morning to you.

I managed to get him to unplug the whole power-bar thing before he left, so I could maybe squeeze in another hour of sleep without the thought of the whole system literally exploding. The problem with that, though, is that I have this very fancy power-bar thing that is battery operated to keep your system going during a power outage. And in order for the thing to let you know it's working hard, it beeps. Just like an alarm clock. Beep, beep, beep. 10 seconds later - beep, beep, beep.

Now, I'm a pretty heavy sleeper and I can tell you that I would have slept through that silly old beeping noise in a minute. I might have even incorporated the sound into my dreams like I had incorporated NPR's Steve Inskeep into a weird family camping dream the morning before. But the thing was that my cat, Felix, (click here to read more about Felix the Cat), had decided it was time for me to get up. And he is way more insistent than the computer's power-bar thing. Once he decides a person should be up, he becomes obsessed. And if the meowing next to my bed doesn't work, he'll jump up on my bed and nibble (OK, bite, really) my elbow. Or whatever body part is not unexposed by the sheets.

So, by 7 (I actually lived with the meowing and nibbling until then, I love sleeping in so much) Felix and I were downstairs fixing coffee and a plate of stinky cat food that he would, just moments later, reject. That was when I saw my clothesline full of soaking wet clothes that had been hanging out in the rain all night. Shit. Now we get rain. Near drought all summer. Dragging the hoses and sprinklers all over my property trying to prevent my grass from turning brown and all my beautiful flowers from dying and now it rains. I guess I should have been watching News 12, as local as local news gets, last night instead of the Seinfeld episode where Elaine pretends to be the janitor in a building across the street from her own so that she can order this fabulous crispy flounder from a local Chinese restaurant. (I know I've seen it at least 5 times already, but it is a funny episode. And Kristin Davis from the afore-mentioned SATC plays Jerry's love interest! An added bonus.)

So as happy and lucky as I feel that I have my health, my kids are healthy and generally happy, my husband has his job and we can pay our bills, and that our home is intact, some days are just tough. The summer weather has been beautiful and wonderful, but sometimes it rains - on your clean clothes. And sometimes your computer smells like it's burning.

Life is good. Life sucks. It can be both.

Summertime

The summer is going fast. Days are flying and the weeks are passing with somewhat out of control speed!

But I've already had three wonderful and memorable weeks, the memories from which will never be forgotton.

Our very first week of summer vacation was spent in Maine. We have traveled to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park every summer for the past eight years. And every year we are fortunate to experience the same joys, and have new surprises!

The hotel pool is always the first destination when we arrive. After that, we took a foggy hike around Jordan Pond - one of our favorite places to spot wildlife.

We did many adventurous hikes this time - "scaling" cliffs and using ladders and bars to reach the summit. There was biking and shopping and swimming and eating of ice cream and sleeping late and even a parade and fireworks on the fourth. Here are some of my favorite pictures.

This was a wonderful start to a very full and exciting summer. What with my boy training for his Jr. Black Belt (yay! he's been at it almost 4 years!), my middle child trying ballet again after 5 years and lots of family time planned, I've hardly had to time to think about it. But once again, I realize how lucky I am.

Check back for pics from our 2nd exciting week, which included the Jamesport Fireman's fair, and from the 3rd week - a very special visit with my sister and baby niece. Gotta get ready for our next trip now. Family reunion in another part of Maine. I haven't even started packing and we're leaving tommorow!

'Night.

Playing the Building

My son, my husband and I took a trip into the city in June to meet one of his teachers at the Asia Society. It was actually his principal, who has a very deep love and interest in all things Japanese and she spent her lunch hours on Wednesdays with about 5 6th graders teaching them how to speak the language. One of the other boys and his father met us there too.

We had a nice time looking at the art, and then had lunch at a great Japanese restaurant. It was great to get to know the principal on a personal level and the food was delicious.

Afterwards, my husband took us all the way downtown to Battery Park to see an installation done by David Byrne called "Playing the Building". He had this organ hooked up with little tiny hoses to several different items in this huge space: Radiators, pipes, motors, and other things I can't remember.

The best thing about it was the space. What a great place to take pictures.

Feeling All Wrong

I'm on the fence about blogging these days. Wondering if it's for me any more. Doubting its value and importance.

It doesn't feel right, lately, to talk about, write about, stuff that's happening in my life. Maybe I'm concerned about how I'm portraying my loved ones in my posts. Maybe I'm taking it all too seriously. Maybe it is too serious.

I keep thinking the same thing, though: It doesn't feel right. I don't feel comfortable sharing the way I once did. Not the things that have been happening. And I guess there's little room left for witty observation of the whole thing...

It takes time and focus and energy. And all of that is spent on actually getting through my life. Nothing left for commenting on it.

I don't know. Maybe it will come back to me. Maybe the urge, the desire, the drive will return. And then I'll be moved to post something more relevant.

For now, it just doesn't feel right...