New England Mamas

Summer Fun

School’s out and summer is almost here.  Trying to find the summer camp to fit your kids can be difficult.  Especially if two of the camps they want to attend run the same week!  My girls are doing some sporadic summer camp and other daily activities.  Next week starts our first planned activity of the summer.

Monday, all three girls will be attending Vacation Bible School (VBS).  Ironically, this was their choice, not mine.  A friend runs the program and invited the girls last year.  They attended and have been asking all year when they can go again.  You’d think with going to Catholic school, they’d be sick of religion.  But they love it.  It doesn’t matter what religion you are, you’re more then welcome to attend.  A bonus – there is barely any cost.  Many just ask for a donation.  Check your local churches for some fun activities this summer!

Monday also starts soccer camp.  While the girls will not be attending due to them wanting to go to VBS, I will be there.  One of my responsibilities as soccer VP was acting as a liaison between our soccer league and Challenger Sports.  If your kids are into sports, I highly recommend checking out their website to see if they offer any soccer camps near you.   Our soccer league has used this British soccer company for the past few seasons.  The trainers are highly enthusiastic about the sport and engage the children by introducing the sport in a variety of child friendly ways.   Seriously, check them out!

Monday, I’ll also be hitting the library to sign the girls up for the summer reading program and some craft days.  Einey went once a week for four weeks last year to the library for 1 ½ - 2 hours to make crafts.  She loved it!  This year, I’m signing the girls up for a few craft days, as well as Einey up for some craft days lead by the local girl scouts.  The best part, it’s free!   

Next weekend, Einey is going to one day of Girl Scout camp, or Camporee.  Her troop is not doing an overnight, which is fine by me.  I could send her to a weeklong program at any one of the Girl Scout camps, but there really are not any that are close by.  Plus I’m trying not to do week long programs.  Just enough to give them something to do to break up the monotony of being at home.

The following week, the girls will attend summer camp at their school.  They encourage you to leave their bikes and have a HUGE water slide set up.  Plus there are games and activities and they get to see their friends.   And they are putting in a new playground this week.  They’ve never had one before. Unlike many parents though, I didn’t sign them up for full week sessions, just a few days spread out through out the summer.  There are field trip days as well, but I didn’t send the girls to those.

If your school doesn’t offer summer camp, check your local Rec. department.  They usually offer full day summer programs as well as field trips.  The downside is, at least around here, they are fairly expensive!

Another thing I need to sign them up for is swimming lessons.  We’ve done swimming lessons through the Re. Dept. for the past two years.  The girls have fun and I like that they are learning a life skill.  For us, I feel it’s important that they learn how to swim!  We’ve got our beach passes already and cannot wait for the lake to open for many lazy summer afternoons of swimming.

One program we haven’t checked out, although I know the girls would love, are the week long summer sessions offered by Mad Science.  We’ve been to birthday parties at Mad Science and the girls LOVED them.  Maybe next year!

Another place to look would be your local community college.  The one near our house offers a kid’s academy.  Each week has a theme such as animals, science, cooking, etc.  I’ve heard from friends who have sent their kids that they had a lot of fun.

If being outside is more your style, check out your local Audubon Society.  They offer a variety of activities from guided hikes to summer camps.  Last year, Einey went to their afterschool program once a week.  She really enjoyed learning about nature and   taking hikes.  They looked for frogs, found mice in the bird houses they were cleaning out for the end of winter and looked for salamanders in a stream.

If you can’t find anything through your local Rec. Department, check out your local zoos, aquariums or science centers.  They usually offer a wide variety of summer programs as well, from one day programs to week long summer camps.

So let’s recap, for us, it’s VBS, swim lessons, craft days and school summer camp.  While it may seem like we’re doing a lot, most of these are either only an hour or two a day, once or twice a week or at the end of June and beginning of July.  For most of the summer, it will be widely unscheduled.  The girls want to invade the Cape again this summer and Husband wants to travel to New York – something about exploring caves.  Right now, I don’t know where we’ll end up, except of course, at the playground* and lake.

Now, if I could just convince the local coffee shop to install a playground, we’d be all set!

*The new playground in town is super cool.  Today, we met some school friends (planned and unplanned) for three hours of fun.  This is, apparently, the popular place to be.  This particular playground opened Memorial Day weekend.  It’s a Boundless Playground for kids with and without handicaps.  It’s been four years in the making and was well worth the wait!  We’ve been a few times and at first, it seemed overwhelming.  There are so many more people there than we are used to.  Add into the fact that the play structure tripled in size blocks the line of sight you once had.  But it’s new.  And fun.  And there’s shade to rest in.

My Ultimate: About a Girl

("My Ultimate" will run most Tuesdays (0k, it is almost Wednesday) and will feature any topic that hops into my head.  The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the other New England Mamas. . . although they should).

Every time we go, we talk about a little girl who died.

"How old was she, Mommy?"

"Why did she die?"

"What was her name?"

"Was this all hers?"

I tell them what I can: 

She was 9. 

She had a lot of things go wrong with her body, but, in many ways, she lived a life a lot like your own. 

Her name was Julia. 

She used to visit this park with her parents.  After she died, they wanted to do something to celebrate her life that other children could enjoy too.

It is such a sad story.

And yet, Julia's Garden, found in WWI Memorial Park in North Attleboro, Massachusetts is anything but sad as the sound of children laughing and shrieking fills the air. 

It is a place that has parents gazing around in awe at the artistic benches, life-size unicorn (well,  what I imagine 'life-size' would be), and the hundreds of flowering bushes.

It has us choking back tears as we read about the little girl for whom this garden is named. 

But, it is also a place where kids excitedly climb a rope ladder to slide down the longest slide I've ever seen.

Where they get squirted in the face with water.

Where they can run up a wooded hill and find a large playground with more slides, swings, cars and picnic tables.

It is a place any child would love.  And, while I am glad I am able to make such happy memories with my children there, I will always think of that little girl.   May she be able to see all that she has left behind.

Sports Personalities

Springtime in New England... the grass begins to take on a faintly greenish hue, the weather only dips below freezing a few nights a week, the birds' feet have thawed out enough to allow them to bombard the birdfeeders with a desperation that is simultaneously sad and hilarious. 

It's also the time of year when outdoor sports become a possibility.  It's not a comfortable, fun excuse to run around in the warm sunshine just yet - that's June - but it does provide the option of sending your children outside in light clothes without risking a visit from Social Services. 

When my daughter was four years old, she fell out of her twin-sized, regulation-height bed onto her carpeted floor and broke her collarbone.  Snapped the sucker right in two.  That put a damper on her ability to participate in any activity that might include physical contact for several months, and it put a damper on my willingness to let her risk that sort of activity for several more.  Then we got caught up in the frenzy which is packing and moving across the state, and thus she was five before we ever considered signing her up for an organized, team sport.

She had already taken beginner swimming lessons, and would continue to do so, but we wanted her to be a member of a team.  There were so many things she could learn: camaraderie, cooperation, patience, shared objectives, small-fish-big-pond...  And, with a little luck, a smidgen of grace and physical self-confidence, both of which her mother lacks in significant quantities. 

So we talked it over, her father and I, and very quickly landed on soccer.  Minimal equipment to start, straightforward rules, the cuteness of a cluster of toddlers bonking off each other on a pretty, green field.  Emily got all dressed in her t-shirt and shorts, shin guards and sneakers, and off we went.

It was a smashing failure.  Emily, for all of her intensity and forcefulness of personality, is not a physically aggressive kid.  In many ways, this is a good thing: we've worked hard to create a violence-free household and we don't want her to push and shove her way to the front of every line.  But in soccer ways, she's too passive; she falls back away from the ball, doesn't run toward her own goal, flinches whenever another player gets too close.  She never scored one goal, the whole summer season, and when asked what her favorite thing was, she replied, "Sitting on the sidelines drinking juice." 

The next summer, then, we cast about for a different team sport.  Emily loves, loves the idea of being on a team, and had experienced the same sort of dementia that I'm having now, when I want to have another baby and have forgotten the frustrating and disappointing aspects of the whole process: "Soccer was great!  I loved it!  It was so much fun!  I was really good at it!"  Self-esteem is not a problem for this child.

After some discussion, we collectively agreed that perhaps she would have more fun in a different sport, and our next attempt has been softball.  She's now in her second season there, and it's going ever so much better.  Softball allows her the physical space she needs to be able to concentrate and not feel intimidated, but still has the team spirit and practice times to help her focus and build some skills that I can't teach her.  I'm not in love with the league, what with the surprise last-minute fees and righteousness of some of the other team parents, but it's working for us.  For now.

We went through a similar trial-and-error process when we wanted to give Emily an outlet from some of her creative energy, of which she has plenty.  Dance lessons were not a success, because, well, she is her father's daughter.   (Have you seen that man dance?)  But art lessons have gone over very well, and provide for a good wintertime activity.

And now our son is almost four and is entering into the sports mindset, himself.  We're starting with soccer, again, because he insists that he wants nothing but.  He's a far less aggressive child, personality-wise, than my daughter, so it will be very interesting to see whether he is physically more self-confident.  I'll be sure to stock some extra juice for the sidelines, just in case.

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Cross-posted at One More Thing.

 

Walking with Really Large Robots

To further our efforts to create an unrealistic sense of the world, we took the kids to see the "Walking with Dinosaurs" show at the Verizon Wireless Arena in Manchester, NH on Saturday.  Last month's expedition included the Harlem Globetrotters.  Just as soon as we can find a play or show that involves truthful politicians or live-action accounting practices, we'll buy tickets to that, too.

With both the Dinosaurs and the Globetrotters, they put on a decent performance and the kids enjoyed it.  Well, with the Globetrotters they were mildly amused but not enthralled; with the Dinosaurs, their heart rates hovered above 120 beats per minute and they were able to sustain a constant state of slack-jawed amazement through the entire two-hour performance, with a slight break during the too-long pterodactyl flight simulation.  Both were decent shows, and fun family outings , so I can't regret the days out... but neither was quite the mind-blowing, family-bonding experience it could have been.

The Globetrotters tiptoed on a fine line between a story of good old-fashioned rivalry and showmanship, with a tendency to err on the side of theatrics.  I'm not sure my kids even realized that the Washington Generals were there, much less that they were representing an opposing team in an actual game of basketball.  There was just so much ball-spinning and shorts-yanking that the idea of the game was completely lost, which leads me to wonder why they even bother with the storyline.  We all would have been perfectly happy to watch a however-long display of long throws and goofy pranks, without needing to crowd the floor with twice as many players.  The whole thing was especially beyond the attention span of my three-year-old, who was more focused on the cotton candy in the hands of the kid three rows ahead than on the action on the floor.

There was also a sense of disjointed chronology amongst the whole thing.  On the one hand, you havd an old-time goofiness and harmless silly pranks, and on the other hand you have emcee's leading the crowd in "Soulja Boy" and making reference to Beyonce. 

Then you have dinosaurs.  Very detailed costumes and robots wandering around with minimal storyline and maximum roar, so that part was good.  Though they tried to throw in some science, which kind of missed everyone there: those of us old enough to appreciate the science were busily watching the remote-control operators and appreciating the sets, and those young enough to believe that these dinosaurs were as real as Big Bird were too young to understand the science.  I didn't feel like the narrative really enhanced the show, altogether, particularly because most of the audience has a hard time understanding the concept of "next week," much less "millions and millions of years."

But the dinosaurs blew my children's minds.  Even the just-turned-eight-year-old, who spent the week prior lecturing her three-year-old brother about how, "They aren't real, you know.  They're just fake.  Just people dressed up like dinosaurs, or statues, or something."  Even she bought into the show, which really was the whole point.

Doug's 8th Birthday Vacation

Today is my son's 8th birthday. Last week, we went to San Diego for school vacation week as a special birthday vacation so he could visit Legoland. We used miles for the airfare and our timeshare exchange for the hotel, so apart from meals, inevitable Lego purchases and the telephoto lens I bought for my DSLR, it was a fairly reasonable vacation.

Recommendations:

The San Diego Zoo is great, but if you have to pick one or the other, go to the San Diego Wild Animal Park in Escondido. We splurged on a one-hour  family Photo Caravan there and got to feed a giraffe.The tour we took, 1-1/4 hours for $69 each extra, does not appear to be offered online, but even if it costs you a bit more, well worth it.

More pictures here.

Legoland. Go before your kid turns 10. Folks had warned me of this, and I am glad we heeded the advice. Doug had a great time but I could see that in a couple years, he would be past the rides. Use your AMEX card, save $12 off admission, and if your kid is a LEGO Brickmaster, s/he gets a free ticket.

Old Town Trolley Tour. Not bad, but unlike Key West (where we had done this before, things are close together and there is no parking), in San Diego I would only recommend this in the high tourist season. We could have driven and parked at the sites we really wanted to see, at about the same cost and far less wait.

La Jolla. Seal Beach. Worth 1000 words:

Restaurants: Highly recommend Monterey Bay Canners in Oceanside (esp. cold appetizer plate),  Old Town Mexican Cafe in Old Town (super duper queso) and Pacifica Del Mar in Del Mar (salt & pepper prawns, yum).

Hotel: We exchanged our timeshare for a week at the Welk Resorts. The unit was small but clean. The restaurant was AWFUL, and the selection of merchandise at the on-site grocery very slim. Dave and Doug enjoyed the mid-week magic show at the theater -- I was up in Santa Rosa at New Comm Forum for two days mid-vacation. The pool area was nice, even though the well advertised water slide was closed for maintenance most of the time we were there. But not all. :-)

(using new telephoto lens)

On the whole though I would recommend it if your plans include Legoland and the Wild Animal Park, both of which are closer to Welk Resorts than they are to downtown San Diego.

Airfare. If you fly United (or any other airline that has a similar offering), buy Economy Plus if you can. It is a little more money, but your legs will appreciate it. We used Amex points for our tickets, but on my side trip to San Francisco, I happened to be in Economy Plus so we upgraded on the way home. Worth every penny.

And that's what we did on our school vacation.

Tags: San Diego

Snickering as a Form of Discipline

A week or so ago, my husband was finishing up our first-of-the-season meal on the grill.  It meant sweeping snow off the back step and finding the grill accessories wherever we'd thrown them in the fall, but we were just so desperate for a taste, literally, of summer.  And you're darn right it was worth it.

He had already called the kids in several times, and in true-to-self form, my son had hopped up and started scampering for the house, while my daughter announced, "Hold on," and proceeded to try to cram in three or four just-one-more-things before coming inside.  Husband decided, instead of bargaining with her or even engaging her in another round of negotiations, to just roll his eyes and come inside, himself.

Three-year-old Jacob then turned around and said, to his almost-eight-year-old sister, "Emily, just get in the damn house."  In precisely the same tone and inflection his father might have used.

It's just not even worth trying to responsibly suggest an alternative way of delivering the message when you're giggling.

I Have No Shame.

Ah, spring! This past week has finally started looking a little less like winter here in New England, and people from Maine to Connecticut are walking around with smiles on their face. The garden stores are opening up, eager buds are popping out on the plants and trees, and one afternoon - go ahead and laugh, you non-New England readers - I even drove around with my windows open!

All sorts of living creatures are making their spring appearances and while some are welcome, others are decidedly NOT. I've spent the week dealing with a visit from one of the unwelcome varieties of small critter. Not the woodpeckers, although they are back. Nope, not any 4-legged animals, like mice or raccoons. Unfortunately, our little visitors are of the 6- legged variety, and as I've been wading through all the treatments and advice and home remedies, I've learned a lot about how to deal with Our Friend: The Louse.

One thing I have noticed now that I am a member of this special club is how many people still feel a sense of shame and panic when their kids get lice.  When the first case appeared among our acquaintances a few weeks ago, I spent hours on the phone with a friend listening to her freak out after her child was sent home from school with an itchy head.  I felt a ton of sympathy for her, and I hope I was helpful in talking her down from the ledge a little bit, but while I could identify with the panic part of what she was feeling, I didn't understand the shame she obviously felt.   

Now that we have it in our house, I still don't get it.  Panic?  Sure - you want to be done with this never-ending combing and laundry NOW, and when it still isn't eradicated you feel frustrated that you have to start all over.   I wasn't sure why it didn't bother me at all if people knew, though, until I called my mom and told her about my awful week.  She replied, "Remember when your sister got it? "

Suddenly, it was clear to me.  I didn't remember it that much, because it was no big deal to my family.  Maybe it was a reverse class thing, because my dad was a doctor and we caught it from my cousin via a ritzy high-class gymnastics camp, but I just never thought it was anything to be ashamed of.  Getting lice was like getting poison ivy - a bummer, a bit painful, and even though it took you out of circulation for a while, it was just bad luck.

A quick spin around the internet will show you that lice are universal.  It is a myth that only "dirty" people get them.  People from all walks of life have the little buggers hitch a ride onto their heads and into their homes.  Heck, even the Countess from "Real Housewives of NYC" had to deal with them.  Of course, her kid had international jet-set lice, but I digress.

This post is really for those of you parents who have yet to experience the thrill ride that is a lice infestation.  Chances are good that you will experience it at some point in your child's school years.  If (when) it happens to you, just remember that "louse" is not a dirty word.  You have nothing to be ashamed of.  Really.

Instead, do what I've done:  shampoo, treat, comb, pick, bag, wash, repeat.  Do your best to eradicate it, be patient and diligent, and try not to dwell on where your child picked it up.  Repeat after me: "Catching lice is not a moral failure."  Then go play the lottery, because you are totally due for a change of luck!

They'll Fight the Law, but the Law Won. . .

I imagine that there are some seven-year-old kids out there in Massachusetts who are taking the news hard. 

"WHAT?  I have to be in a BOOSTER seat?  But, but, but. . .those are for BABIES!!!  I'm too old/big/cool for a booster seat!"

Tough luck, kiddos. 

Last week, Governor Patrick signed a law requiring kids be in a booster seat until the age of eight, or until they reach 4 foot 9 inches in height.  I have no idea what the previous law required since I intend to keep my children in booster seats until the prom.

There are critics of this law.  There are those who feel that it is another case of the government telling us how to parent, how to live.  That instead of teaching parents why they should keep their kids in boosters and then letting them enforce it themselves, we now have "big brother" taking over again.

I understand that complaint.  I'd like to think that most parents would learn about the dangers, would do the right thing. 

But, then I think about an intelligent, caring, but misguided family friend whose tiny elementary-school-age child rides without a booster seat.  Why?  Because they drive a massive SUV and think that  their vehicle's bulk alone will protect them. 

For those kids, and others like them, I am glad to hear that this is now a requirement.

Just don't try to legislate how clean the interior of a car needs to be, OK?

It's a Wonder-Full, Chipmunk-Filled Life

(Stay tuned at the bottom of this post for information on my wonderfully fun contest details!)

We just took Sweetie to The Boston Museum of Science this past weekend. For such a smart, curious, silly little girl, there was no greater place we could have taken her!

(While at the museum, Sweetie introduced herself to another mom and little girl, saying - My name is {Sweetie}. I'm really smart and a little curious. And extremely humble too, I might add. What's with this a little curious business? She's been saying that about herself for weeks! I mean, she is curious, but we've not made a habit of telling her she is at all.)

Anyway -

At the museum, Sweetie got electric...

And she boogie oogie oogied....

In fact, she had a fiercely good time with all the mirrors...

Then we viewed some wickedly deceptive artwork...

Before ending the day with a lighter activity - butterfly-making in the Discovery Center!

Yes, we all had a wonderful/wonder-filled day of learning, playing and laughing at the museum. Sweetie's already talking about our next trip there!

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And now for my All-Official-Actually-For-Real-Exciting-DVD-Give-Away Contest!!!

I have been given 3 copies of the brand new DVD Alvin and the Chipmunks. Sweetie actually got her own early copy from the Easter Bunny and has enjoyed both the wide screen and the full screen versions multiple times in the last week. But that's okay because this is one movie that's truly funny - entertaining parents and kids alike.

And now, I'm sharing with you! That's right - I have those 3 copies and I will give them away to 3 of my readers. Here's what you have to do:

If you'd like to be entered into my Alvin and the Chipmunks DVD Contest, please just leave a comment on this post. And if you'd like to tell me A) your most wonder-filled childhood memory, B) A wonder-full moment you experienced with your own child(ren), or C) your favorite Alvin and the Chipmunks related memory - well, that would be pretty dang awesome too.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to leave said comment on said post before the stroke of midnight (EST - or there abouts. I'm not that picky) on Friday, April 4th 2008. From those timely entrants, I will randomly choose 3 winners using a highly scientific names-from-a-hat method. I'll announce the winners in my next Sweetie Saturday post on April 5th.

That's it! May the best reader win!

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Cross-posted at Sweetie & Me - Spina Bifida Moms.

Priorities

I'm back in New Hampshire today.

It's cold here.

There are two feet - really, I checked - of snow standing in my front yard.  Four-foot snowbanks.  This is actually a one-foot improvement from the last time I saw it, a week and a half ago.  I'm back at work today, sitting in an uncomfortable chair at an uncomfortable desk and resenting that the Powers That Be have reorganized my employment priorities, without considering silly things like logic or if-it-ain't-broke, because I'd rather be at home on-call.  My kids are hyper and clingy, as though I might just disappear at any moment even though we gave them lots of prepration and information before I went away.  My husband is now willing to express a lot more of his fears and reservations about my vacation, which I appreciate because I had many of my own, but I also wish he'd shared because who needs to deal with that stuff alone? 

Just a big, fat pile of reality waiting here for me.  Ready or not.

I took it all upon myself, I know.  Because I made a choice to prioritize other aspects of my life over my husband and children for a few days, and I didn't have to do so.  I could have stuck to the routine, kept everything normal and predictable, walked the straight and narrow.  I also could have gone on vacation with them, enjoyed it immensely, and then simply returned home with them to settle back in as a group.

Instead, I chose to go on vacation with them, and then send them home by themselves and go on a second vacation with my mother and sisters.  To a third-world country, with no internet or cell phone access (both of which I could have paid for, but, again, made a choice not to), thereby rendering myself as completely absent and removed from my closest family members, from my heart, as possible.

What kind of mother am I?  What kind of person, to do such a thing?

I can remember, in my pre-child days, an aunt and her husband who had two children together (and even got married to each other, after an extended breakup, before the second was born).  They had a relationship that apparently worked for them - still does, I suppose, since I believe they're still married though no longer an active part of my life - and one of its key points, in my 12-year-old mind, was the fact that they took separate vacations.  "I won't do that," I swore.  "When I get married, it will be because I've married my best friend and want to do everything with him.  I won't want to travel separately or do things without him."

Turns out, I was right about that middle sentence.  I did marry my best friend, and would be happy to do everything with him.  But I also have interests he doesn't have, relationships he doesn't share, and sometimes those other things pull me in a literally, geographically different direction.  I've become a mother who sometimes takes vacations with someone else while leaving the kids home with my husband. 

Last year, it was Paris.  And that was an unequivocally wonderful, exciting, interesting trip, and if the kids had gone along we'd have found a way to make it work for them... but they're children, and as such I don't expect them to have my attention span for museums and palaces and catacombs and yarn shopping.  Rather than impose my interests upon them, sublimate my interests to theirs, or compromise both, we found a way to let them continue with their daily lives while I went and played overseas for a while.  I relied entirely on my husband's capability as father and adult, and didn't leave a single list, or note, or instruction to follow.  They ate and played and slept and went to appointments as he saw fit, not as I saw fit, and it went perfectly fine and bumpy and different and normal. 

This year, it was Jamaica.  Less a trip for me, myself, and more reflective of my mother's interests.  Which is fine and good, because I don't want to be a leader of a group, just a member of a family.  The trip itself was not unequivocally anything; there were moments that will stand out as highlights of my whole life, and moments that left me as scared and stressed as I have ever been, and sometimes those two things happened within hours of each other.  My husband and the kids did great once again, even though this time I couldn't do a daily late-night check-in online.  They functioned without me.

I think that's part of what this is all about, this solo vacationing.  Showing them that they can function, because of all the just-in-cases and you-never-knows in life.  Letting them be physically separate from me for a short time, to start to develop a sense of self and independence in small, safe doses from an early age.  Demonstrating to them, as well as to myself, that motherhood can still involve personal priorities and an outside life without abandonment or neglect. 

It can't be an easy lesson to learn.  We all struggle for Time With Mom, I think, on some level.  Even when Mom is not a good, or safe, or caring parent.  I see it at work all the time:  The child or teenager who insists that they hate their mother, while peeking sideways at her to make sure she heard them say it, watching for her reaction even as they prepare to deny it.  The children of abusive and frightening mothers, clinging desperately to her leg as they are removed from the home.  The adult who never knew his or her birth mother and insists that they had a fine upbrining but still defining themselves as fundamentally different, with a question mark where many others have a period.  Motherhood matters, even in its absence.  Even when it matters in a bad way instead of a good one.

So I understand that my kids are inevitably going to push and pull in and out of a relationship with me, craving my attention even when, sometimes, they'll reject it.  They were born into a household in which, despite all of my myriad faults and imperfections, we've created a solid and safe family environment.  I can be serene, or even a bit smug, in my sense that their struggles with me, their quests for independence and dependence and identity and interconnectedness, are all normal things.  But "normal" does not imply "easy," and having Mom gone for five days when they would rather have her home is going to be hard on anyone.  They missed me, and I do feel guilty about that, even knowing that I will certainly take more childless vacations, even while they're still children.

I wonder when they'll know that even as the lesson is hard to learn, it is also difficult to teach?  Because it does hurt, knowing that I'm letting them down and focusing on myself and my relationships with my own mother and sisters.  Knowing that I was selfish enough to spend time and money away from the people that I will always unhesitatingly refer to as "the most important in my life."  Wondering, as always, with everything, what the difference will be between the messages I want to send to my kids, the intent behind the actions, and the messages they actually receive, the interpretations they make. 

It's complicated stuff, this parenting.  Who knew?

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Cross-posted at One More Thing.