Was it enough?

We dropped our daughter off at college last week.

We got her set up in her dorm room. Very easy move in. She has what we're calling her "limbless couch" under her lofted bed, where I expect she'll spend a lot of her recharging time. (The couch is armless, and also sits directly on the floor, so, no limbs.) We took her to an early dinner. We walked around some of the campus and a bit of the main street in town. We met her charming roommate from Pakistan. And then we left her there at North Hall.

I didn't cry until that last hug. Aden said something about it feeling strange that we were leaving her and she wasn't going home with us. I told her I've spent her whole life trying to not leave her behind anywhere, so it was odd for me, too. She stood on the sidewalk and watched us walk away. And I burst into tears.

Her first night in the dorm was Thursday. She's now spent three nights away from us. She's fine. It's all fine. But the closest thing this feels like to me is when we moved her as a baby into her own room to start sleeping through the night. We kept our babies in a co-sleeper attached to our bed when we brought each of them home. It was a safe space for a baby to sleep where I could still scoop them up easily when needed. I liked having them right there essentially in my bed where I could watch them breathe. But then at four months when Aden didn't need to eat in the night anymore, and was sleeping seven hours or more at a stretch, we moved her to her own crib and I cried. It felt stupid to cry. But I missed her.

I miss her now, too. And just like when she was a baby, and I could count easily on one hand how many nights she'd spent in her own room, it's hard. In a few weeks, I won't be able to recall exactly how many nights she's been away. But today that number is three and I feel it acutely.

Technology is easing things, though. When Aden was originally preparing to leave for school in 2020 (before the world shut down and she deferred college), I asked what the easiest way to stay in touch with her would be. I'm not a person who texts or video chats, but I would do those things if that meant keeping in touch with Aden. She told me she prefers Discord. So I joined Discord as "Aden's Mom" since she was the only person I planned to talk to there. But then things got extended into various family chats, and it looks like I have confessed to a favorite child because I am "Aden's Mom" in all of them until I can figure out how to change it.

Through Discord I've gotten to see Aden's new art supplies and admire her new textbooks. (UW Stout is smart about everything, so the art supplies are bundled into affordable kits at a local store, and all the books are rented and collected from the library.) She got help from her dad for her roommate's phone problems. Last night we gathered as a family online to play a couple rounds of Jack Box, and it was fun to hear her laugh and interact with her siblings like normal. We were even able to watch another episode of Star Trek together by streaming Netflix over Discord, and we commented as usual about Klingons and Vulcans during the show. Aden was watching from her bed with headphones on, and I could hear her roommate chatting once in a while with someone on the other side of the room.

It's comforting, because she's away, but she can still participate in regular family stuff here and there. I suspect once classes start we'll hear less from her, but for now? While those nights away I can still count on one hand? I like that she's as close as my phone.

I can't imagine anyone is surprised by the idea that I miss my daughter. But the main thing I'm pondering as she ostensibly begins life on her own as an adult is did I do enough to prepare her? And was her childhood okay?

Because it sort of hit me all at once that her childhood is over. Officially and forever done, so whatever I meant to do by now as part of that, I've missed my chance.

We did lots of good things, but was it enough? There were books I didn't read her, and movies we didn't see. Did I take her enough places? Add enough special touches here and there? Should I have made her practice more? I'm feeling guilty about any time that I yelled and I shouldn't have. We got her a dog, but he was so weird. I think I should have taken her roller skating more often. I feel like there were crafts we were supposed to do together, or wisdom I should have imparted.

Was it a good childhood? Because it was up to me to make it so, and I hope I did okay.

And is she ready to be an adult? In many ways, more than I was when I left for college. But in others, maybe not?

She still doesn't have a driver's license. She does know how to vote. Cooking we've got covered, because at this point she's a better and more adventurous cook than I am. She can swim, so at least I made sure that happened. She doesn't use the phone well and she's bad at making appointments, so maybe I should have done more there? How? 

My mother once told me that she never wanted keep us as little kids because she loved interacting with me and my brothers as adults, but that it would be nice to go visit us as small children again. Isn't that a lovely idea? I think about it a lot. But I also think it would completely tear my heart apart to go back and see Aden as the chatty three-year-old she used to be, or the clever eleven-year-old, or the mysteriously empathetic baby she was in my arms.

I still remember that baby in my body, kicking me at orchestra rehearsals every time the music stopped. Eighteen years seems like a long time to get to show things to a person. How did I miss so much? How can it be done already? I cannot believe my first baby is in college.

I miss her. I'm excited for her. I hope she's doing okay. I hope I gave her enough.

 

Aden the Octopus

This costume is really fun. Easy on, easy off, no zipper, cozy to lounge around in.

 

When Aden decided she wanted to be an octopus, my first thought was to make her arms and legs into tentacles, and have the additional tentacles be suspended from her arms with fishing line. But Aden had a much better idea, which was to create a costume like a poncho with a hood and have tentacles all around.


The three tentacles in the back are sewn closed, but all the others are open so Aden can put her arms into whichever she likes. Sewing-wise this was a pretty simple costume. The time consuming part was all the suction cups, which Aden cut out and glued herself.

She's wearing all black underneath, including black gloves. Looking forward to seeing this outfit on tonight at trick-or-treat when she should look like an octopus just floating about the neighborhood!
 
Aden says it may be her most favorite costume yet. I'm glad I can make her happy with something like this!

Aden the Chameleon

In recent years Aden has waited until only a week or two before Trick-or-Treat before deciding on a Halloween costume.  She likes being a kangaroo, and can always happily fall back on that, but luckily when she has a last moment inspiration we've been able to put it together in time.  This year she wanted to be a chameleon.

Aden the Armadillo

Aden really likes being a kangaroo.  Up until a couple of weeks before Halloween she thought she would just be a kangaroo again this year.  But her sister in particular couldn't believe she'd pass up the chance to be something else, especially since she could always still just be a kangaroo if she changed her mind.

So at the last minute she decided to be an armadillo.

By last minute I mean about a week ago I had a couple of hours to sew together a basic jumpsuit and tack on a couple of ears, and then Aden was supposed to do the rest.  She really wanted to make all of it soft so she could lounge around in it, and she had ideas, but wasn't sure how to execute them and kept putting it off.  We wound up the day before the Halloween Dance staying up late and getting the last of it done.

After some trial and error we ended up with a fleece armor-shell filled with batting and the outside layer folded with nine pleats (for a 9-banded armadillo).  I stitched it to the body and attached the tail to the underside of it.  And I added a small snout like a bill to her hood.


All the lighter color details Aden did herself with paint, plus she added claws to a pair of gloves.

It's not as flashy as her siblings' costumes this year, but she's very happy being an armadillo.

And she seems to be past her worries about being too old to Trick-or-Treat, which I'm glad about.  There are so many adults who dress up in our neighborhood she doesn't look out of place, and it's just a big welcoming event here, regardless of how old or young the kids are.








At school next week she's just going to be a cowgirl because her school is already warm, and changing in and out of a heavy costume for gym sounds annoying, but at home she plans to hang out in armadillo mode often.  She loves being an armadillo.  (And I love her.)

Pigs in Space

My first baby just graduated from eighth grade.

How does that happen?  I remember a decade and a half ago the pregnancy test coming up positive, and telling Ian, and then telling my grandma (who cried).  I remember talking to Aden in my belly and enjoying having her with me everywhere I went even though I hadn't seen her yet.  I remember the baby who smiled at me for real at three weeks old, and who had full blown empathy at four months.

I remember a little girl starting at her public Montessori school who refused to walk down to her kindergarten classroom in the basement unaccompanied, which was a problem in the winter for her pregnant mom with the toddler in tow and a husband deployed in Iraq.  That problem was eventually solved by her finding a friend to walk with her.  That same friend was one of the last she walked out of the school with after graduation.

I can't believe time can come crashing all together like this.  Hundreds of trips in and out of that school, no particular one looking like a milestone, and yet she started as a tiny four-year-old I could scoop into my arms, and came out an impressive young woman who performed a violin solo on the stage for the graduating class and left clutching a certificate.  I am overwhelmed.

The Knee Jerk NO

Before I begin, let me say that I started writing my NYC post again, and Blogger randomly lost about two hours of writing.  Not the whole post this time, just back a day's writing, but what is going on?  I am beyond frustrated.  I don't know how many times I can try to recreate that work and not go insane so I may have to scrap it.

Some people don't understand why I don't just write blog posts on my desktop and then copy and paste when I'm ready to post, but there's something irritating about that that is hard to describe to someone who doesn't blog.  It's not like regular writing.  It's more immediate and I want to arrange something as I'm thinking about it in the format where it will live.  I've started copying and pasting from Blogger to email as a backup in addition to hitting the ineffective "save," but I still don't understand why now I have to do that.

Anyway.

The other day when we were all in the car together, Ian was telling a story about how in Iraq there was a point where he and another officer were in charge of a group, and the other guy was the picture of a big tough military guy, and Ian by comparison was not imposing.  But Ian was the one everyone considered the hard ass really in charge because he was the one who would say, "No."

I laughed and said, "Which one of you was the parent?"

There is a lot of knee jerk "No" when you are a parent.  More than there should be, and I make a conscious effort to stop and reassess before I simply say "No."  Many times when my kids make a request and my first instinct is "No" and I take a moment to really think about it, I wind up saying "Yes" instead.  Because many times the request is harmless.

I think the automatic "No" comes from exhaustion.  There is so much responsibility and so much to get done in so little time that deviating from whatever plan is in action feels like one thing too many.  And so much of parenting, particularly of small children, has such a meandering pointless feel about it that it can get frustrating.  Adults usually like to feel they are accomplishing something.

Volleyball's End

Girls in their last huddle after the award ceremony

Aden recently had her last volleyball game of the season.  I'm so pleased she decided to give playing on the team a try and that it worked out well.  Participating in a sport can be good or terrible.  I only experienced the terrible at her age.  I'm glad my daughter got to experience the good.

The Fernwood Pirates 8th Grade Girls' Volleyball team wrapped up the 2015-16 season with 42 wins and 2 losses.  It was really fun to go every week as a family to cheer Aden and her team on.  I enjoyed watching all of the players steadily improve.  It was moving to see how consistently encouraging and kind the coach and the players managed to be.  Aden was not one of the power players, but she got better with every game, and by the last one her energy and commitment made us really proud.

There was a lot to learn by suddenly being a family that did sports, though.  The first was keeping track of the shifting schedule.  We missed the second game of the season because we didn't realize at first that the game times moved so much.  Games could start anywhere from 5:30 to 9:00 (which still seems shockingly late to begin any activity with kids), and if we missed an email about a change it was easy to not show up at the right time.

The Sports Thing

Aden joined the eighth grade girls' volleyball team at school this year.  She was interested in getting more exercise (which can be harder to do when the weather is cold) and I suggested she might like a more social outlet for that, so why not give volleyball a try?  She was hesitant, but she signed up, and she's really been enjoying it.

It's been interesting for us.  Earlier this month we went to our first sports thing as a family when we watched Aden's team play.  We've never been to see any kind of organized sporting event together.  I know Aden has been to baseball games with other people.  Mona was briefly on a swim team at the Y, but that was as low key as you could get, and we never all went to a meet.  I think the closest Quinn has been to sports is the Gaga Pit at school.  Sports has not been part of their education, so they know "of" sports.

Sports holds little to no interest for me.  I am glad to be married to a man with equal non-interest in sports, but it's definitely an area where my kids have not had a lot of exposure due to our lack of involvement.  However, Aden is among the very top of the list of things that do interest us, so we are all happy to go watch her play volleyball.

The Recycled Kangaroo

Aden wanted to be a kangaroo for Halloween again this year.  She loves being a kangaroo.  She likes being soft, she likes having a big tail, and she likes having a pouch (which conveniently holds either candy or the dog).

Aden has been a kangaroo many, many times.  It was the first costume idea she picked for herself when she wasn't quite three.  (I made several suggestions, but when she realized she could use the pouch of a kangaroo costume for Trick-or-Treating, that was it.)

The main thing I learned from that first kangaroo costume was that in subsequent costumes not to include feet.  I didn't expect my kids to wear their costumes over multiple years (and for any and every occasion), but they do, and room for added leg growth has proven necessary.



So as much as Aden liked being a snowy owl last year, and a zebra the year before, she really liked her kangaroo costume from the year before that and decided to wear it again.  It just needed a few alterations.

The Good and the Bad

Aden invited me to go with her class on a field trip to a movie downtown.  As part of the Milwaukee Film Festival there was a showing of Landfillharmonic, a documentary about children in Paraguay who live in a dump and play music on orchestral instruments assembled from garbage.  Aden knew I'd be interested, and when her teacher said there were a couple of tickets left for any adults who wanted to come along she was excited to ask me.  It was short notice (she told me the night before), but I was caught up on my work and figured it would be fine for Ian to cover for me in the morning.  I told Aden I could go.  She was delighted.

Aden is 13.  13 is hard.  We are struggling a bit with her lately, because the parenting road is not particularly clear anymore.  When children are younger there are relatively fewer choices about many things.  I'm not saying it's easy, by any means, because it's not, but the variables are different.

With toddlers, for instance, you know all of their friends.  You usually share most of your child's environment.  You know where they are, what they are eating, and what they are watching.  The scope of their potential worries tends to be narrow.

By eighth grade, for many, that all goes away.  Most days my daughter spends more waking hours outside of our house than in it.  I do not know all of her friends.  I have only a vague idea of what her days look like, I no longer have control over what she eats or watches, and her concerns are complicated.

Book of Mormon

We went to see The Book of Mormon here in Milwaukee this weekend!  The original plan (when we bought the tickets half a year ago) was to go with my brother and his wife, but that was before their baby made different plans for them.  So we decided to take our daughters instead.

Welcome to the World!

I have a new nephew!  The adorable Rivyn, son of my brother Barrett and his wife Dosha, arrived into the world a bit earlier than expected, but he's home now and doing well.  I got to meet him in the NICU on my way to Vermillion, South Dakota recently.  I'm looking forward to holding him next time.

I'm looking forward to lots of things!  So are my kids.  They are excited by the idea of a baby cousin to love and eventually include in all their fun.  I'm glad that my kids have each other, and that my niece has them, too, and now this little boy will be part of that cousin group and the recipient of all they want to share.  They want to pass down their favorite sand toys at the cottage and show him how to paddle an inner tube across the lake there.  They want him to bounce with them on the trampoline and bike around the neighborhood.  They want him to join in their cookie baking experiments and to help decorate our sidewalks with chalk while waiting for an ice cream truck to come by.

In good time, though.  They understand for a few years there's just a lot of aimless cuteness to admire, but of all the cliches about raising kids the one about "It goes too fast" is probably the most true.  (Followed closely by "It changes everything.")  As hard as it is to imagine right now with that little boy unable to do much more than wiggle, they will be doing those things and more with their cousin before we know it.

Production

I am making a point to get work done in my home shop every day, and three violins are now rolling!  It's exciting, and I'm so much happier when I get to build.  I feel productive and inspired.  (And also tired since I'm up working until midnight in order to make it happen, but that's just the way that goes.  The time has to come from somewhere.)

The main thing I'm focusing on is an Amati model I'm doing on commission.  It's a new model for me, and it's fun working with new lines and shapes and thinking ahead about what the player might like.

Aden and her maple

Aden and I also started working on her violin together.  She's making a Strad model, and I told her she can do as much or as little of the work as she likes.  I'm fine with just making the whole thing, but I'm glad she wants her own hands in it.  She picked out all her wood and I'm walking her through the process step by baby step.  Currently she's still planing her blocks, which makes your hands sore if you're not used to it, so there are many breaks.

I decided it would be helpful to Aden if I had an instrument going alongside hers that I could use for demonstration, so I'm also making a Lee model that I intend to use as my next competition instrument when the VSA meets in fall of 2016.

Aden's and the competition violin are moving along at a slow pace, but that's fine.  My real energy is going into the Amati model and that's coming together very well.  Want to see?

Candyland Cake

I can't really take any credit for Aden's birthday cake this year.  I was hoping to redeem myself after last year's cake wreck, but all I did for this cake was frost it and suggest the general concept.  Aden baked two layers of vegan chocolate cake, I did the crumb coat and the final frosting surface, then Aden did all the decorating herself.

Snowy Owl

Two down, one to go.  I'm heading into the homestretch of the Halloween costume making.  Quinn's pigeon costume is essentially finished.  And now Aden's snowy owl is done!

I'm glad Aden wanted a costume.  She's worried she's getting too old for it, but I believe you can wear a costume at any age.  People I think get rightly annoyed with teenagers trick-or-treating who just walk around in normal clothes with a bag, but wearing a costume for Halloween is fun at any age, and people appreciate grand displays of imagination.  Why not be a snowy owl for a day?

I started with a basic fleece jumpsuit, but with a wider hood than normal and an extra piece fastened with Velcro across the front of the neck to kind of blend her head into her body more like an owl would be.  I have to say, I am getting fast with the jumpsuits and I make fewer mistakes.  They aren't perfect, but I can trace the kids on the fabric and then pretty much sew the whole thing without them around and just have them try it on again when I finalize the hems, etc.  I used to have to do the whole thing up in safety pins and have them keep putting it on and taking it off and I'd make lots of adjustments.  But after so many years I've got the basics down and can just see it in my head enough to do it on the first try.

Anyway, this was the plain jumpsuit and hood:

Aden's Neighborhood

Aden was recently asked by her art teacher to represent the elementary students at her school in a local art competition.  The neighborhood association wanted to sponsor the first annual art show for kids as part of the Bay View Art Walk.  The Art Walk is a big evening event in June where artists display their work all over town, and the kids' work was shown in the library.

Aden won first prize!



I'm so proud of her.  This was her first time using acrylics on canvas, and she worked on it for weeks.  She planned out her painting in different sketches beforehand, and at first only did actual painting in the evenings when she was feeling inspired.  As the deadline drew nearer, Aden discovered the truth about working in a creative field.  Artists of all kinds, when they are accountable to someone else, don't have the luxury of waiting for the perfect moment to create.  At some point you simply have to buckle down and do the work.

So Aden painted late into each night, and when I could I'd read to her to keep her entertained.  (We've been reading Harry Potter, and while she painted we got through all of book three and most of book four.)

Box of Memories

The Christmas holiday was incredibly busy around here.  We had lots of guests over a couple of weeks, all on the heels of birthday season and card making craziness.  I didn't really get much of a chance to write anything about it beyond the hunt for The Riddler and concert reviews, but there was sledding and three kinds of lasagna and homemade Indian food and lights that spelled out the word "Mold" everywhere (my brother was in charge of lights so don't ask me about it--I suggested we add more that spelled out "Mildew" and "Radon" just to make it even more festive but what do I know?) and a gigantic grey squash that turned into tiny muffins and campaign posters and telephone-pictionary and Scrabble.

Something I'd planned to post about and never got around to was my favorite gift this past year.  I finally buckled down and made a gift for Aden that I've had in mind for a while.

I make my kids' Halloween costumes every year.  My original thought, long ago, was to use the scraps from the costumes to make little toy versions of them each time and give them to the kids for their birthdays or Christmas.  That happened exactly once, when Aden was one year old, and I made her a stuffed bunny to match her bunny costume.  Then more kids, more costumes, more everything, but less free time.  So much for that idea.

But I liked that idea!  I never quite let it go.  And the thing is, Aden in particular is deeply sentimental.  She still has all of her old Halloween costumes in the closet.  I figured at this point having mini versions would give her something to hang onto that takes up less room, and maybe we can start discussing the possibility of passing those costumes along to other kids one day without it seeming as painful to her.

I dug through the sewing box and found fabric from all her past costumes, and hand stitched little versions of each stuffed with cotton balls.  I kept them kind of crude on purpose because they looked cuter.  I found blue beads to use for her eyes.  Then I got a simple box from a craft store and stained it and stuck all the little figures inside.

Aden loved it.  Actually, Aden cried when she opened it.  I joked that next time I would give her a present that made her happy, and she hugged me very hard and insisted it did.

Now, luckily for me, in eleven years Aden has been a kangaroo four times and a bat twice, so this wasn't quite as much work as it will be if I make Mona or Quinn such a box in a few years.  But it's still a good collection of little figures and I'm glad to have finally put it together.

I'm particularly pleased with the dragon:

Self-Defense Starts With Getting Out Of Your Own Way

I believe most women should take some form of self-defense course at some point in their lives.  Too many never get around to it or don't find an opportunity, which is a shame.

In Bay View (our neighborhood on the south end of Milwaukee) we had several incidents of sexual assault out on the bike paths and streets last year, and one woman was shot for her purse while walking with her boyfriend on Halloween weekend.  It's unnerving to say the least.  The level to which women are made to feel unsafe in our society is staggering.  It's easily the most daunting aspect of raising girls.

In response to the assaults in our community someone organized a self-defense class last fall for women and girls ages 11 and up.  The admission fee was a donation of some non-perishable food items for a local food pantry.  I decided Aden and I should go.

Cake Wreck 2013

I'm officially declaring Aden's cake this year a big failure.  (Emphasis on the word "big.")

This is okay for two reasons:  First, for all those people who somehow think I can do anything it's nice to show I can't, and second, disaster tales are way more fun to tell than success stories.  So come see how badly cake making can go!

Aden wanted a Minecraft themed cake, and she decided she wanted it to look like a crafting table from the game.  I didn't know what that was, but found this (unfolded) image online:

Essentially it's just a cube with pixelated images laid out in a 16 X 16 grid on each side.  As far as cake shapes go, a cube didn't sound bad.  But our first mistake was deciding how big to make each side.  Ten inches sounded like a simple number.  (Heh.  Lesson one: Smaller is better.  Smaller may have worked.  In retrospect, eight inches tops would have been the way to go.)

My plan was to make a cube of layer cake, frost it, and stick pages of sugar paper on that I'd paint appropriately with food coloring.  Sounded time-consuming, but doable.  But then the store did not have enough sugar paper.

The World of Work

About a week before school let out, Aden had one last field trip.  She got to participate in a large scale Junior Achievement "Work" simulation.  The kids were taught how to manage money by using a checkbook and debit card and do some form of job.  Which meant a week or so before the trip everyone had to apply for the different jobs available.

Aden wanted to work in one of the restaurants.  Even though she wouldn't be cooking for real, she likes the idea of making things for people and organizing that kind of activity.  She held out hope for the job she wanted up until the day before the field trip when the assignments were given.  And then Aden found out she was going to be a bank teller.

She was really depressed about it.

I started off by telling her that the good part about her job was that she would get to see everyone.  Everybody in every job would have to visit the bank.  And that depending on the people she was with and details of the job she didn't know yet, it would probably be a lot more fun than she expected.

And then I told her something I'd never considered talking to my children about before, even though it seems obvious: People seldom end up in the jobs they want.