Size 14 Forever

I went out last night to buy new pants because nothing fits right now.  It's a good problem to have when your weight is going the direction you want, and not so when it's going a direction you don't.  But sizes are a mess anymore.

I started this summer at a size 18.  When those pants got loose I used a belt for a while, and managed to bypass needing anything in a 16.  When I got to 14 I was happy because my favorite pair of jeans in my closet is a size 14.  It's a pair of Calvin Kleins I got on sale at some point during my weighty journey either up or down several years ago.  They would probably get classified as "mom jeans" by someone because they actually come up over my hips to my waist, where, frankly, they should be.  That whole mid-rise trend is not fair to those of us whose torsos are just a battlefield of stretchmarks.

Anyway, my weight has been up and down enough times that I've had several occasions to break out those size 14 jeans.  Now they are loose again and I had to buy a pair of 12s.  The 10s I have still gathering dust in the closet from the last time I was smaller will have to wait until I've lost another ten to fifteen pounds.

But here's the thing:  Another ten or fifteen pounds from now I will be the weight I was when I got married in 1997.  And back then I was a size 14.  I also remember shopping for pants in high school in the 80s.  And I was a size 14.  There is a forty pound difference between where I am now and where I was in high school.  That is insane.

Which makes me wonder why I'm going to all the trouble of swimming a mile every day and being disciplined about what I eat because apparently if I just wait long enough I will be a size 10 again without even trying.  Or maybe the pendulum will swing the other way and I will be back to being a size 14.  (Either way, nothing short of a sari has ever fit me that my brother has brought me back from India because there sizes are a whole other thing and my 5'10" frame is off all the charts.)

Black Friday Makes Me Blue

Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays.  I am fortunate enough to come from a loving family where I feel safe and provided for, and am equally fortunate to be able to pass that along to my children.  Food, family, conversation, togetherness, and a chance to relax long enough to appreciate the things that matter in our lives....for me this has always been what Thanksgiving is about.

There is something special about a national holiday that is secular, inclusive to all Americans, and at its core about gratitude.  Taking stock of what we are grateful for in our lives is an important act that not enough of us do regularly.  I am thankful for so very much.

I probably have nothing new to add to the general discussion about Black Friday.  I'm sure it's all been said by now.  I know retailers depend on holiday sales to get themselves 'in the black' and that in this economy in particular getting more people spending helps the larger picture.  I despise the latest push to move that spending spree onto Thanksgiving Day itself.  There is a lack of respect for something I find sacred there that saddens me.  But I can't make other people use their holiday they way I would.  Maybe for someone else it's an improvement to get away from their home and into a crowded store on Thanksgiving.  I'm just glad that's not me.

I suppose the thing that bothers me is how much shopping has become part of the American identity. 

Fancy (Babble)

I am not a fancy person.  I like certain things to be nice and I appreciate attractive surroundings, but when it comes to my own appearance I have a limited range of sartorial choices that make me comfortable.  I’m a jeans and t-shirt kind of person.  I like to have pockets, I like my wrists unencumbered by cuffs or bracelets, I like things that are simple, and I like clothes that don’t inhibit the activities I enjoy like building violins, baking, or getting on the floor to play a game with my kids.

When I try to wear decent clothes I’m self-conscious.  I keep checking and double checking everything if the way the clothes rest on my body doesn’t feel familiar.  I’ve tried to accessorize with a pretty scarf or shawl but I keep moving it or pulling at it or shifting it around and it’s not worth the distraction.

I don’t iron or dry clean.  I don’t wear makeup.  I don’t even have pierced ears.
I admire people who look put together.  I find fashion interesting, and I have opinions and preferences, but most of it stops before it reaches my own personal self.  I’m not elegant.  To pull that off you have to make it seem effortless, or at least natural, and that’s just not me.


Luckily, being a self-employed adult in charge of my own itinerary, I make lifestyle choices where jeans and a t-shirt works most of the time.  I only really need to dress up to play concerts, so I have a collection of black clothes that are comfortable to perform in and look nice enough on stage.

But every once in awhile something comes up and I realize what a hopeless shambles my wardrobe really is.  Between changes in my weight and my indifference to clothes shopping there is nothing decent in my closet if I need to look nice.

And this weekend I’m accompanying Ian to a military ball.  Ha.

Not that anyone there will care how I look as long as I make some vague effort to appear respectable, but I’d like to feel pretty.  I’d like to make Ian proud as he wears his dress blues with his medals pinned on his chest.  I’d like to have one, decent, dare I say elegant, dress to wear.

I imagine shopping for clothes if you have a body that fits into things could be fun.  But I am too big on top for most of what’s out there, and there are few things more demoralizing than trying on one thing after another that won’t zip or that makes your butt look bad or your legs too weird or your whole body just seem wrong.  I spent an entire morning with a patient friend trying on dresses at the mall and by the end of it I felt as if all my efforts to lose weight have been pointless and I should just eat cheesecake, wear sweatpants, and never look in the mirror again.

The last time I needed a fancy dress at a time when nothing fit was for a cousin’s wedding several years ago.  I had just had a miscarriage and I was supposed to play solo viola for the ceremony.  (I was still bleeding during the event, and Aden and Mona were flower girls, and that whole day was a dizzying cacophony of emotions for me.)  I actually wound up sewing myself something a few days before the wedding.  I didn’t use a pattern, I just found some pretty material and made it up.  I have no idea if it looked okay, but I was not in a mental state to completely care.  (I hope I looked okay.  If I’m feeling brave later I may dig through a photo album and see.)

I don’t have the time or energy to try that this time.  I’m at the mercy of what stores have to offer.  My fall back plan will be something from the ever present collection of black things.

Speaking of concert wear, this past weekend my girls had a violin recital.  They did beautifully.  I was nervous for Mona after last year, but she simply got up in front of the room, cranked out Ode To Joy the best she’d ever done it, and smiled sweetly as she took her seat again.  Aden did a lovely job as well, and Quinn was about as good as you could ask a five year old to be at an hour long violin recital.  It was a really good day.

The only hitch was about half an hour before we were supposed to leave and I told Mona it was time to put on something nice.  She balked.

Both of my girls were big into fancy dresses when they were little.  They wore Easter and Christmas dresses all year round, always looking as if it were picture day as they set off for school.  A few years ago Aden started gravitating away from dresses, but still has a few for special occasions, and she had no trouble finding a nice one for the recital.
But not Mona.  Mona had on leggings and a long sleeved shirt and wanted to know why it wasn’t good enough.

I explained that the clothes you choose to wear say something as clearly as if you were holding a sign.  A police uniform means something different from painting clothes means something different from a wedding gown.  I told her by dressing nicely for the recital it was a way of acknowledging all the hard work everyone had done to prepare for it by showing it was special.  If she dressed like it was any other day, it was like saying the recital wasn’t important.  She needed to wear something fancy.

She fussed and she fumed, but she understood my explanation.  She started digging through her closet.  The main thing we discovered is that Mona has grown since the last time she had to wear something dressy, and nothing zipped or buttoned.  She looked stricken as one outfit after another was set aside for Goodwill, but eventually we found something new that had been a gift from a friend but not worn yet, and it was perfect.  Mona looked pleased despite herself.  It was a nice dress, comfortable, with pretty colors.  I let her wear it right over her regular outfit so underneath she would just feel like herself.
As I knelt down on the floor behind her, carefully doing up the buttons, Mona said to me quietly, “I don’t like to be fancy.”

You and me both, sweetheart.  You and me both.

On Target (Babble)

(I suppose a brief disclaimer is in order to mention that Target doesn’t know I exist beyond what shopping I do there, and I am not mentioning a specific store as some kind of promotion for it.  It just happens to be the store in our neighborhood and we like it.  But if Target sees this and wants to send me gift cards I won’t say no.)

We have a Target store two blocks from our house.  We are there way too often but it is literally our corner store.  It’s hard to think of something handier to have just down the street, frankly (aside from maybe my kids’ grandparents, which is something I dream about some days).

When we first moved into our house, Target was our source for a lot of the new household goods we needed.  When I had my first baby I used to walk her there a lot.  Ian was in school most days, and hanging out at home with tiny Aden got claustrophobic sometimes and two blocks to Target was easy and fun, and usually necessary because we always needed diapers or wipes or something.  We only had one car, and if Ian took it on weekend drills with the Army, being able to walk to Target with the baby for something was a godsend.  In the winter it was a place to go that was heated, and in the summer it’s air conditioned.  Two blocks isn’t hard on tiny legs, and to be able to walk someplace with bathrooms and a changing station that kept the kids entertained and also allowed me to get some basic errands accomplished at the same time has been great.  To say it’s been convenient is an understatement.  There’s a snack counter, a pharmacy, and a photo lab.  I’ve breastfed my babies at Target, I’ve suffered a few impressive tantrums there, and we’ve had many an amusing lunch while playing I Spy and sipping Icees.  I know that store like the back of my hand.

Or, at least I did.  Recently the kids and I noticed a number of truck-sized containers taking up the south end of the parking lot.  We speculated about what they were for.  My kids were hoping for a carnival of some sort, just waiting to be unpacked and spread out in a dazzling display across the whole parking lot, but instead, the next time we went we discovered that the store is being remodeled.  They are doing it in little sections and I suspect mostly at night so that the store remains functional during the process.

It’s weird.  I hadn’t really thought about just how much time we’ve spent at this one store until they started messing with it, and it’s kind of unsettling, more so than it should be.  My kids don’t like change anyway, and outside of home, school, and the violin store, I would wager that Target is the other place they know best, so it’s awkward to have it transform into something unfamiliar.  That probably sounds sad to some people to say my kids and I are attached to a big chain store, but our neighborhood Target has always felt personal to us.  We’ve known the same employees there for years.  I’ve talked to people on our block who have lived here for decades and remember when the neighborhood protested the building of the Target store just up the street, and they all say once it opened everyone loved it.  It’s where we run into our neighbors and buy our school supplies and get medicine when we are sick.  It’s a place where we have fun while getting stuff we need.  Or don’t need (if it’s on sale):

(Mona at age 5 trying on high heels.  She still has them, and someday down the line they will be the right size.)

I was there the other night with Quinn because he needed pants.  Most of the pants he has have snaps on them, and he can’t do/doesn’t like snaps, so he keeps re-wearing the same pair of sweatpants over and over.  I figured we’d just pop in and find a couple of 5T pants without snaps and life would be good.  But Target has an insane habit of always stocking things way in advance for the upcoming season and seldom things that apply to the moment, so there were no boys’ pants, only swimsuits and shorts.  So we went ahead and bought some shorts because by the time it’s hot enough that he’ll need them Target will be on to parkas, so we grab what we can when we have the chance.  We eventually found one pair of pants the right size without snaps hidden deep in a clearance rack, so at least there are two pairs of something he can wear until Milwaukee warms up enough to break out the shorts (which could be July–that’s not a joke.  My mom still brings up the time she came to visit for Independence Day and we watched the fireworks in the park in winter coats.)

In any case, before we could find pants we had to find the boys’ section in general.  But the boys’ clothes area is now camping gear.  Camping gear is now bikes.  Next to bikes is going to be a small grocery store, which is new and is going to be great to have down the street, but my kids are wary of this idea because they don’t associate Target with bananas.  The fitting rooms have been blocked off for remodeling and in their place is a temporary structure to use.  The walls in the entry and photo areas are now red.  We’ve been to Target three days in a row this past week and each time there have been large noticeable changes.  Who knows how fast it will all be switched around?

So I took a moment to photograph my favorite quirk about our Target before it possibly gets removed:

I’ve always found it amusing that there is an express lane for people who like colloquialisms and one for grammar nerds.  That I even noticed puts me in the latter category, obviously.  All things being equal I try to use the “10 items or fewer” lane.

Anyway, I was sort of surprised when I started looking for photos on my computer that these were the only ones I have of us in Target.  I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, because we don’t tend to document the most ordinary aspects of our lives.  Trips to Target for us are as ordinary as it gets. 

But when I think back on my own life, I wish I had more photos of really ordinary things.  I wish I had a picture of the Red Barn restaurant where we used to eat before it became a video arcade and eventually was torn down to make room for 696.  I wish I had a picture of the giant slide from my old school playground before they tore out all the play equipment for a parking lot.  I wish we had more pictures of our house before the addition was put on.  Places where you make nice memories are special, even if they happen to be part of a big chain or look impersonal at a glance. 

I have watched my kids grow up in that store, the passage of time marked in changing shoe sizes and new backpacks and little toys bought at night to put under pillows from the tooth fairy.  So is it silly to be attached to Target?  I don’t think so.  It’s not as lofty as wishing my kids knew our local art museum as well as they know the toy aisles at the back of that store, but it’s part of their regular life.  It’s certainly American.  For most people on this planet our daily experience is not ordinary looking at all, which I think makes it interesting in it’s own way.

So we will continue to watch with interest the developments of our corner store.  And after July we can also pick up bananas there.

Random Parenting Things That May or May Not Have Helped (Babble)

When I was pregnant for the first time I got a lot of advice, most of it welcome, some of it weird.  One friend who gave birth to her first child six months before I did gave me a book she read that she credited with helping get her daughter to sleep through the night at three or four months old.  I appreciated the thought greatly, and my friend is one of the more graceful and inspiring mothers I’ve ever met, but I read the book and disagreed with it.  I did the opposite of what it said, and my daughter was sleeping through the night at three or four months.

The main thing I learned from that experience is that it can be very hard to tell what works.  Parenting habits, particularly when dealing with the mysteries of a baby, develop a lot like superstitions.  There are a lot of healthy well-adjusted babies who would probably sleep through the night at three months as long as you weren’t doing something ridiculous.  (And for those of you with kids who never sleep through the night, I have great sympathy and I’m not for a moment suggesting you are doing something wrong, I’m just describing my own situation.) 

If the night your kid finally sleeps happens to coincide with the same day he or she had rice cereal for the first time, you might be inclined to think that had something to do with it.  Or if you tried a white noise machine, or swaddled the baby differently, or stood on your head next to the crib all night.  Who knows?  Babies change so fast it’s very hard to pin down causation for many behaviors.  But we want to feel like we understand as much of it as possible, and human beings instinctively look for patterns, so often when I hear parents swear by things that worked with their babies I always remain a little skeptical.  All of my babies slept through the night at three or four months.  Lucky me I think they were all wired that way.  I don’t take credit for it, only for managing to not get in the way of it.

My children are not perfect by any stretch.   Aden is always negotiating everything and it’s exhausting.  Mona has no volume control.  When Quinn is tired he will look for any excuse to be upset so he can run from the room screaming and put himself to bed and have it somehow be my fault.  (Once my offense was to ask him if he wanted a spoon so he could eat his soup, and he looked at me, lower lip trembling, and finally burst out with, “How could you ask me about the spoon!?!? before he ran up the stairs and passed out on my pillow.)  They don’t know how to separate when they get on each other’s nerves.  They leave the back door wide open and then whine to me about the bugs that got into the house.  They leave their shoes everywhere.  But honestly, they are WAY better than I was as a kid, so I know better than to complain.  I get many compliments on my children out in public because they are generally cheerful and polite and kind to other people.

So I’d like to believe I’ve done something right.  But what?  I have no idea.  For the most part my parenting philosophy is to keep my kids relatively safe and healthy, provide them with lots of opportunities to learn about the world, love them, and otherwise stay out of their way.  They will teach me who they are.  I can let them know I expect certain things, like respectful behavior, but I don’t feel it’s my place to mold them in any significant way.  As a result when people ask what techniques I may have employed to achieve certain outcomes, I usually come up blank. 

And the truth is, I only know how to parent my own kids.  I can’t even parent Aden the same way I do Mona because they are very different people.   I have doubts that whatever may have worked with them might translate to another kid, but maybe it could.  So here are some things we’ve tried.  Some of them may have worked, and some may have been coincidence.  Here are some random child rearing stories in areas where we seem to have done okay, offered up for your consideration or amusement, and if they help, I’m glad.

Sharing:  When Aden was a baby we used to hand her things, take them away, and give them right back.  We wanted her to develop a sense of not being in a panic when something was taken away, because its absence was temporary.  We have always explained sharing to our kids to mean that “You get it back.”  Each of our children is entitled to one or two things that they do not have to share, just like there are things their dad and I have that they can’t touch.  Aden will still, on occasion, share her precious pink bunny with her brother if he needs cheering up, or with a visiting child if she believes it will improve a situation, but I think it helps her to know she doesn’t have to.  We have very few issues with sharing in our house (or anywhere).  On the rare occasions where the kids are bickering over some object, I declare it’s mine and I get to keep it until they can work something out amongst themselves.  (I’m amazed how often they look relieved and let me just keep it.)

Sleeping:  When all our kids were babies we made noise during the day.  I did not want to have to tiptoe around during nap time, so all my kids learned to sleep with the bandsaw running or the radio on or us walking around doing what we needed to do.  The only problems we’ve ever had with naps were related to the unfortunate timing of school pickups, etc., and we never found a good solution to that.  For sleeping at night, I used to feel pretty strongly that kids should sleep in their own beds.  We had a co-sleeper for all of our kids as babies, and somewhere between three and six months we’d move them to a crib in the next room most nights.  I never let my kids cry in their crib because I didn’t want them to associate it with any negative feelings.  (My kids only really cried if something was wrong, anyway, so to have ignored it would have been a very bad idea.)

All of them moved to real beds at around eighteen months.  (We’d start with just the mattress on the floor, then in a couple of months put it up on a frame with a rail.)  All of my kids share a room and have learned to block each other out in order to sleep.  Recently Aden was unhappy that Mona kept turning on the light after I put them to bed, but when I talked to Mona about it, it turned out she just wanted to draw on her magnadoodle before going to sleep.  I lent her a small headlamp for awhile and that helped, and then a few weeks ago I actually discovered a magnadoodle that comes with a little flip up light!  Now she uses that and Aden can roll over in the dark and go to sleep.  But for the most part, they prefer to sleep in the same room, and sometimes they even have sleepovers in each other’s beds.  If something happens in the night and they come to my bed to cuddle, they nearly always go back to their own beds on their own before the night is over.  They like their beds. 

The glaring exception to all of this is Quinn, but he’s spent so much of his life with his dad deployed it makes it hard to know what to do with him.  There was a stretch between eighteen months and about two and a half years old where he slept in his own big kid bed, but then Ian left and we moved and blah blah blah, so now the kid’s a nomad.  I ask him each night where he wants to go, and his sisters are nice about making room for him in one of their beds if he wants to crawl in with them.  I suppose we could put our foot down about making him use the bunk bed he picked out at Ikea, but frankly I don’t care.  I think it will sort itself out soon enough.

Bedtime:  When Aden was two we used to have issues with her wanting to get up after we put her to bed.  We had a couple of strategies for this.  The first was, if possible, we all went to bed at the same time.  Then when Ian and I were sure she was out (usually about half an hour later), we’d get back up and have grown up time for a little while.  The only problem with that was often we were so tired ourselves that we’d pass out and not finish any of the things we’d planned to get done. 

My favorite solution was to convince Aden there was nothing worth getting up for.  She once insisted she wanted to do what I do, so I sat with her in the dark facing the wall in the family room.  She was very patient and I almost cracked it was so boring.  She kept suggesting we could turn on the TV or play with some toys, and I kept telling her we couldn’t do any of those things at night.  I told her when she went to bed, I sat like that in the dark until it was my bedtime.  It took over 25 minutes, but eventually she decided grown up time was not worth participating in and she never left her room without a good reason after bedtime again.  We’d hear her, sometimes, awake in her room, but she never bothered to come out.  Why would she? 

Now that they’re older and they know we’re not staring at walls, the rule is if they come out after bedtime they have to help clean.  It’s nice, because every once in awhile Aden or Mona really can’t sleep, and they come find me and ask what they can help with, and we end up having a nice time picking up toys or folding laundry together.  If I pick a chore they don’t want to do they occasionally just put themselves back to bed, but most of the time they help and it turns into rare and pleasant one on one time.  During summer I don’t believe in bedtimes.  (Ian’s been known to keep them up so late they beg him to let them go to sleep.)

Manners:  This one I think is just pure modeling.  I say please and thank you and you’re welcome, I remind them to say please and thank you and you’re welcome….  They are very good about it.  I’ve often overheard them together in the breakfast nook asking each other politely to pass things and saying, “Oh, that’s so kind of you!  Thank you!” and “You are very welcome!”  Lately Quinn has taken to just saying things like, “Water,” and then I usually pick my own noun and say something like, “Ceiling.”  If he’s tired he gives me an irritated look, but most of the time he rephrases it to include a please and make it at least sound like a request.  (I admit complete failure, however when it comes to how Mona eats.  She can’t stay in her seat very long and she uses her hands instead of utensils way too much, but most people understand, and we’re working on it.) 

I’ve had to work with Aden a bit about being nice when accepting gifts she didn’t like and she’s got that one down, finally.  Mona loves almost everything so it hasn’t come up the same way.  (She once opened a birthday gift from Ian’s mom and it was wrapped in bubble paper.  She exclaimed so happily about getting bubble paper that when I told her there was something inside it she looked at me as if I’d just told her she could eat chocolate for dinner the rest of her life.  That was a very satisfying birthday.)

Why:  I think most kids hit a phase where it’s hilarious to see how much time you can waste by asking, “Why?” over and over.  I answer the questions for as long as they interest me, and then I usually end it by saying, “Zee.”  They just drop it at that point.

Practicing:  I think for most kids who do something like play an instrument it’s probably a good idea to do that on their own, but when they are small they need direction.  I like helping my kids practice.  It seems to help to keep it predictable, and until recently I used to do it in conjunction with bath time.  While one girl was in the bath I’d do violin nearby with the other one.  When they were starting out, to entice them to play we used to have practice time be dessert time.  They got a marshmallow after each little thing they did, so they loved to practice and developed a habit for it that now doesn’t involve any sweets.  Also, lately I’ve tried to learn the piano accompaniment to whatever Aden’s working on.  I don’t play piano so it keeps me humble. 

One of the best things I ever read was an interview with Isaac Pearlman, who said sometimes when he’s teaching violin and he finds himself getting frustrated with a student who can’t do what he’s asking, he switches his own bow and instrument to the opposite hands and remembers what it’s like to not be able to do it either.  I find that idea very useful in parenting, not just teaching, because we forget how much of what we do did not always come easily and had to be learned.

Shopping:  Because of Ian’s deployments I’ve had to do most of my shopping with at least one kid in tow.  In terms of them asking for things I have them pretty well trained to know that they are more likely to get something if they don’t ask.  They are good about not touching things if I talk to them about it before we go into the store and remind them about it in a nice way once we’re inside.  To get them to stick close inside a store I usually pretend I’m trying to lose them and they are on me like glue.  (If I feel like at least one of them is wandering too far away I say things like, “They’ll never find me over here!” and then they are all at my side again.) 

Parking lots are hard when you have more children than you have hands, so I usually tell the third kid to hang onto my butt.  I’m sure it looks absurd to other people passing by (assuming they even notice or care) but if it involves a butt kids laugh, and I know exactly where all my kids are.  I taught Aden very early how to ask a store employee how to page me if we get separated.  Usually if I don’t see Aden anywhere I start walking toward the service desk and halfway there I hear my name being announced over a loudspeaker.  She uses my name in those situations now, but when she was too little to remember I had an actual name I told her she should have people ask for “Aden’s mom.” 

In grocery stores I’ve always let them help find food or bag things or push a cart and it keeps them busy and happy.  When Aden and Mona were too young to really help, I’d let them think they were helping by asking them to find certain letters or numbers or colors around the store.

Restaurants:  The best tip I have if you end up in a nice restaurant with small kids (this happens to us when someone else without small children insists) is to let them order dessert first.  It comes quickly, they are happy, they sit still and eat while adults talk, and usually they have enough room left to eat their meal when it comes. Most of the time we aim for kid-friendly places if we have to eat out, but even if it isn’t we get a lot of mileage out of playing I Spy.  There are a couple of regular places we go to eat where I Spy is such a part of the event they launch in as soon as we are seated.  I Spy is good because it makes them stop and really study their surroundings.  (And it doesn’t have to be a real game.  When it’s Quinn’s turn he usually says something like, “I spy with my little eye, that lightbulb right there!” and then Aden says, “You mean that one?” and he excitedly tells her, “You’re right!”) 

If possible I bring something for them to draw on/with, and I usually have backup food like cereal bars or crackers in case whatever we order doesn’t work out for them.  My kids are very nice in restaurants, they always thank the waiter or waitress, and when they were small Ian and I took turns doing a walking tour of the whole place until the food arrived which helped a lot.  Always ask for extra napkins up front.  Assume something will spill, and when it doesn’t it feels like victory.

General Good Behavior:  I wrote awhile back about how the whole positive reinforcement thing wasn’t working for us, but I do tell my kids when I like what they do, I just usually do it at the end of the day or at some more random moment.  They love being told when they’ve done something right, just not usually when they’re doing it.

Me:  I’m never afraid to apologize to my kids if I think I’ve been out of line.  When I yell I tend to explain what drove me to it and how they can help avoid driving me to it again.  (But they must like hearing me yell, because the simple fixes they could be doing to make that go away never happen.)  I never say, “Because I said so,” but I do sometimes ask them to trust me and I’ll explain why later.  I never pretend I’m perfect or always correct.  I don’t pretend to give them choices when they don’t really have any.  I tell them I love them often enough that it should be boring but they still smile.  They know their dad and I are happy and in love and that nothing is more important to us than our family.  I want them to think of me as a safe place to be, and most of the time I think they do.

So if there is anything in there that you think you can use, go for it!  We all need ideas and new perspectives sometimes.  I could use advice about getting Aden to put her face in the water at the pool so she can take real swimming lessons.  Anyone been through that yet?  (And no, seeing her friends or sister do it doesn’t help.)